The Faculty of Applied Engineering has a long tradition of cooperation with industry in the field of education as well as in applied research. The Lab Factory Automation (FAL) belongs to the Department of Electromechanical Engineering with a specialisation in Automation. It is a well equiped lab in PLC/PC/robotics and networks which was installed with financial contribution of the European Social Fund (ESF), Flemish Government and Research projects.
The Lab Factory Automation relies on 3 pillars:
1. Education of students
Phoenix Contact (Master students), PLC S7 and Schneider (Modicon) controllers
PLC networks: Profibus, Asi, Interbus, Industrial Ethernet, Basics of ethernet (IEEE802.3, Profinet, WLAN)
OPC DA for datacollection in combination with Visual Basic, LabVIEW to develop a HMI-application and report tool (Excel reports)
Robotics: 1 Panasonic, 4 Kuka, 1 Mitsubishi
Vision technology
2. Training for industrial partners
PLC training: IEC 61131 standard
PLC Schneider Modicon (Training Centre regio Antwerp for Schneider)
Industrial PLC-networks: ASi, Profibus, and Industrial Ethernet (Basics, Profinet IO/CBA, ILAN and WLAN)
OPC standards and solutions (OPC DA and OPC UA)
Consultancy for industrial partners
The target of all our consultancy tasks is the creation of flexible production-processes. We realize this by implementing automation technologies, which allows ‘open’ vertical data-flow between the production-floor (PLC, robot controllers etc.) and the administration - Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This all happens under supervision of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
Application of standards like OPC, ISA88, ISA95
3. Research in OPC, MES and Vision in co-operation with industrial partners
The research activities started in 1997 with the coordination of European Projects. The objective was the education in automation systems
- Adapt: Bussystems
- ESF4: Soft- and SlotPLC, SCADA and OPC
These projects were extended by Flemish Projects: TETRA (abbr. TEchnology TRAnsfer), which objective it was
the cooperation in automation technologies with companies (SME)
- CoNET: Industrial ethernet standards of different PLC platforms (Siemens, Phoenix Contact, Allen Bradley): PROFINET, Modbus TCP/IP, Ethernet/IP, Wireless)
It was also this Lab who coordinated the Erasmus LLP project CoNeT: Cooperative Network Training (2009 - 2012) and which lead to the submission of the TATU project.
