Projects/mercatis GmbH/S7

MFCs (Material Flow Controller) are fully automated systems consisting of high racks, conveyor belts, automatic separation systems and all other sorts of logistics and transport technologies. It offers storage, indexing and retrieving of transport pallets.

Big MFCs are in turn composed of more simple Siemens S7 Automatic Controllers. F.ex. it can have on S7 controlling transport belt, one L7 controlling pick-ups, another L7 controlling high rack and so on. Normally MFC come with their own monolithic software to control all S7 and providing high level API. Problem of that approach are:

• You need to pay for purchasing this API, and also pay for using it
• Different MFC API are incompatible between themselves
• Reconfiguring MFC (moving L7 robots around, adding new functionality by adding L7s) requires custom rewriting of MFC software which can not be done in-house
• You got vendor lock-in to manufacturer of the MFCs

The aim of S7 project is to take over from MFC monolithic programming, and control single S7 Controllers directly by LISA, thus providing client with much flexible programming options and with better dashboard for showing what is current activity on all parts of MFC. This also solves problems outlined above.

Highlights

• Hardware abstraction of storage architecture
• API that communicates directly on lower L7 level
• Secure protocols
• L7 dashboard showing global picture with different levels to drill for information

Technologies used

• Java NIO
• Jboss Netty
• JMS
• JMX

Info

Role: Senior Software Developer
Time span: Apr 2010 - Jan 2011