The Champagne-Ardenne region and its areas in Eastern France are notably known for their large fields of cereal production with many producers being members of cooperatives. The concentration of cooperatives in recent years has accentuated the need for these players to structure themselves as industrial companies.
For this reason, silos must benefit from a similar approach as processing plants. Although operations are simpler than in factories, their large number is a source of complexity and constitutes an item of expenditure that have to be managed.
Among all silo operators is Vivescia, an agro-industrial cooperative group operating around 180 silos in the region.

The company aimed to implement a control system composed of an automation system and a supervision software. SF2i, a service provider specializing in the integration of automation systems, industrial networks and industrial IT, was selected to carry out this project.
For years SF2I has had the opportunity to work with several clients to set up or renovate numerous silo control systems. Realizing the difficulties of its customers to find a solution easy to implement, reliable and perennial at the same time, it took the decision to develop a generic solution for silos piloting relying on ARC Informatique's PcVue IoT/SCADA platform.
For this project, the client's expectations were clear:

• Control interfaces simple enough to be apprehended by seasonal workers during harvest seasons
• Identical operating methods on each site to be able to move teams from one site to another
• Unified maintenance methods to quickly restore monitoring systems or equipment piloted by those systems
• Control of maintenance and operating costs.
• Provide a simple to use tool easily accepted by silo managers and operators: ergonomic, intuitive, functional, user-friendly

To meet these needs, SF2I designed and developed a generic control system based on the PcVue supervision. The solution was conceived to simplify the design of applications but also their maintenance and evolution over time.

In this application, path calculation and automatism are dissociated. The supervisor takes charge of the path search work, while the PLC controls the equipment according to the requested paths.

All information required to operate a silo is grouped together in the synoptic view of the application. This view allows to operate the silo and to search for paths.

In addition to supervision, PcVue also offers Vivescia services such as maintenance contracts for its software, and training of advanced developers / maintainers of the control solution.