Industrial Automation Magazine India

FieldComm Group announces Daikin winner of 2023 Plant of the Year Award

Published on : Friday 15-12-2023

Daikin’s Kashima plant is using HART-enabled instrument technologies and tools, combined with AI, to optimise maintenance and equipment management.

Austin, Texas, December 14, 2023 – FieldComm Group has announced that the Daikin Industries Ltd plant in Kashima, Japan, has been selected as the 2023 Plant of the Year. This is the 21st annual awarding of this unique international honor, presented to end user companies in the process automation industry to recognise the exceptional and valuable application of FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus, FDI™ and/or HART® Communication technologies.

The Daikin Kashima plant produces a wide range of fluorochemical products used in air conditioning equipment, automobiles, semiconductor production, and other applications. Advanced digital technologies have been applied at this site as part of a digital transformation (DX) initiative. The team has implemented HART-enabled instrumentation, and associated digital diagnostic tools and predictive analytics, all combined with artificial intelligence (AI), so the facility can transition from traditional time-based maintenance to more effective condition-based maintenance.

By first learning normal plant behavior from historized big data, the AI system can then perform nonlinear regression analysis on live data using a neural network, enabling the anomaly detection and prediction needed to address potential problems and avoid unexpected shutdowns.

Many valve positioners, pressure transmitters, and Coriolis flowmeters were already HART-enabled, and the team used Fast Ethernet-based HART converters to access other equipment, along with various DCS/PLC systems. Daikin officials point out that success of AI depends on the accuracy of available data, and HART devices made a difference in this regard.

"The HART signals of each device are wonderful data packed with the know-how of each device manufacturer. By having AI learn this along with various process data in the plant, it's more likely to be able to learn various signs of equipment anomalies," said Masumi Yoshida of the Daikin Industries engineering department.

Condition-based maintenance at this plant over the past three years has reduced maintenance costs by an estimated US $400,000, and the team is looking to expand the technology to many more production sites around the world.

A complete list of recipients and their success stories are available at go.fieldcommgroup.org/award.

For more information about FieldComm Group's services, please visit the website: https://www.fieldcommgroup.org.

 

For a deeper dive into the dynamic world of Industrial Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), explore our comprehensive collection of articles and news covering cutting-edge technologies, robotics, PLC programming, SCADA systems, and the latest advancements in the Industrial Automation realm. Uncover valuable insights and stay abreast of industry trends by delving into the rest of our articles on Industrial Automation and RPA at www.industrialautomationindia.in