PGM Operations Gain Remote Visibility And Increased Cybersecurity With New ASM-Style Ignition System

Project Overview

Concera developed an Abnormal Status Monitoring (ASM)-style SCADA platform in Ignition to replace the existing legacy SCADA systems at Sibanye-Stillwater’s Rustenburg platinum area. The new SCADA encompasses three vertical shafts, 10 air compressors, and various utility areas to enable efficient operation of the system, as well as remote viewing of data and screens from multiple locations. 

Challenges

The existing legacy SCADA system had a very cumbersome interface and lacked critical features to enable Sibanye-Stillwater to operate effectively. The various sites also had differing standards, making cross-usage difficult for operators and technicians. 

The old system became a struggle to manage and maintain because of complexity, infrastructure, and time perspectives. The new system had to provide a simple interface that could lead operators to any issues affecting production while having the full functionality and information required for in-depth fault finding. Additionally, the system required external access from the business offices without negatively affecting the critical view of the operator’s control room onsite. 

The new system needed to be cost-effective, implemented rapidly, and provide top-of-the-line cybersecurity to counteract the old system, which had become highly vulnerable due to legacy software and operating systems.

The project’s development timeline was short: the development for all UDTs, faceplates, icon standards, and pages needed to be completed in three months because of Sibanye’s financial year-end constraints. 

Another challenge was to develop the system for multiple different PLC standards and tag structures while maintaining a consistent look and feel for the operators. All objects additionally needed to adhere to existing ASM standards used at other Sibanye-Stillwater sites, which were built on a different platform.

Some of the other challenges proved more practical, such as implementing a very specialized surge curve graph that was critical to the maintenance and operation of air compressors. Additionally, it was challenging to provide everyone within the company network a view into the operations from any location without having direct access to the operational sites as well as having a central location for the standardized objects which could be pushed down to each site. Each site needed to own its visualization, while allowing company-wide access to these resources.  

Solution

Concera developed a standard project template for each operational area. This template contained objects that generated a full alarm tree, providing view navigation based on the layout of the tag providers and various UDTs. By clicking on the tree or icons on the view, the faceplates automatically updated with the required information without changing views. Using this project template reduced development time significantly. 

Concera also created standardized icons and views that could be used as embedded views in any standard, ensuring a consistent look and feel. 

To implement the surge curve graph, Concera leveraged built-in Ignition components. Additionally, Python scripting enabled Concera to replicate existing functionality without having to incorporate external software. 

The system features a hub & spoke architecture to ensure data availability at a central location. Six Ignition Edge gateways placed at critical, geographically dispersed site locations all feed data to a central services site gateway, in combination with a site gateway at each of the three shaft sites, providing data collection and operator views. These gateways are all connected to a central hub gateway, which provides a view for all the offsite locations and ensures that the critical operations will still function in the event of a network disruption. Historical data is stored locally on each gateway in a PostgreSQL database for short-term fault finding and reporting. Concera implemented a central Canary server that uses MQTT to provide long-term production-related data storage. The central hub gateway is located within the IT domain and provides unlimited views for anyone with authorized access. 

Each site gateway and Edge gateway inherits the engineering projects from the central hub, enabling Sibanye's development team to maintain standards and push any changes to all locations. Each site gateway maintains the project that is being used in their control room, enabling the onsite personnel to maintain their particular views. Each production project is copied to the central gateway to enable the offsite locations to view the newest project at all times. Access to the visualization, design development, and gateways is handled via the IT-domain controller, enabling IT to ensure proper cybersecurity practices.

Result

Sibanye now has a high-performance ASM SCADA that is simpler to maintain, requires less computing resources, and enables a broader range of people to view the system from more locations, all while maintaining operational functionality and security. Ignition’s unlimited licensing model as well as the browser-based nature of Perspective allows users to get access to the visualization without hassle, excessive configuration, or additional licensing. 

The Ignition BasicCare support cost has also significantly decreased yearly spending. 

New IT policies can now be applied to these systems as legacy system requirements on operating systems have been removed. 

Sibanye has seen the benefits of the Ignition, which extend beyond visualization. This has led to plans to add additional functionality to the Ignition system normally limited to MES/MIS systems.

Project Team

Concera was started in August 2022 by Craig Marsden and Roelf Boshoff, with Jacques Venter joining in March 2023, and Stefan Buitendag joining in September 2024. 

Craig Marsden (Ignition Gold Certified) and Roelf Boshoff previously worked for 14 years at Rockwell Automation developing and implementing projects across multiple clients. They have extensive experience with Rockwell FactoryTalk and Wonderware Archestra SCADA platforms as well as Rockwell Allen-Bradley PLCs.

Jacques Venter (Ignition Certified) worked for Sibanye Stillwater for 17 years, and was the Superintendent Technical Specialist with extensive experience on Wonderware Archestra and Rockwell Allen-Bradley systems. 

Stefan Buitendag (Ignition Certified) is an electrical engineer that is developing his PLC and SCADA skills under the guidance of the other engineers at Concera.

Start Date: October 2024

Deploy Date: February 2025