Aston Dane is pleased to announce a national agreement with Routeco Plc to support their business expansion strategy. The company already one of the UK's leading distributors of industrial automation and control products has identified Aston Dane as a partner to support their growing services arm.

 Ian Stewart, Managing Director for Routeco says "Routeco are very pleased to have signed a Partnership Agreement with Aston Dane in promoting their Safety Training and Consultancy Services. Routeco has invested heavily in its safety business in order to be able to deliver a total safety solution incorporating world-class products and professional competent people capable of giving sound advice in an ever challenging legislative regime. Aston Dane has a superb pedigree in ATEX and functional safety of automated systems and we look forward to working with them in the future."

 David Swain, Managing Director of Aston Dane believes this partnership will benefit both companies and says “over the years, both companies have grown their business by demonstrating real value to its customers, which in turn has been supported through ongoing loyalty. Working closely with Routeco means our services will have even greater market penetration and will enhance the excellent range of safety services being offered by Routeco.”

Aston Dane is supporting MTL for a special training event to raise awareness and provide opportunity for improvement strategies based on a practical understanding of requirements . This training course, aimed at Engineers and Managers, provides an introduction to IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 to cover the basic principles of the full lifecycle care for Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS). It covers the legal status, risk assessment, design principles and the development of testing and maintenance strategies. Understanding is reinforced by syndicate work based on practical exercises from the real world of the manufacturing process to demonstrate how Opex and Capex savings can be achieved using these techniques. The event is scheduled for 11th & 12th October in Crawley, West Sussex.

The course will be presented by Aston Dane Consultant Peter Waite with over 40 years experience, regarded by many as one of the leading experts in the field of safety systems.

Under an agreed term contract Aston Dane has successfully provided engineering services covering a range of disciplines to ensure Brunner Mond completed the first two phases of their Manufacturing Improvements Strategy on time and to budget. This work, which covered design improvements to their mechanical equipment, services and associated control systems to optimise the process throughput. Aston Dane also provided critical safety management services to ensue the work was undertaken with minimum risk to personnel. The third and final stage, a twelve month programme, is about to commence and through the collaboration that has been developed as a result of the term agreement will ensure this phase of the project will be equally as successful.

As a major international manufacturing company and part of Tata Chemicals group, Brunner Mond plays an essential role in many areas of everyday life manufacturing ingredients such as sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, calcium chloride and associated alkaline chemicals

Performance Improvements for Irish Television & Radio Transmission Service Company RTÉ Networks

 Aston Dane has recently completed the final stages of commissioning of a new Network management infrastructure. The ScopeX system supplied by CSE-Servelec was installed and commissioned across the countrywide network by Aston Dane under a partnership agreement and provides RTÉ Networks with improved quality of data and management reporting information to help support transmission performance criteria for service levels. Aston Dane has just received a further order to provide enhancement to the scheme which include supply and configuration of a direct SNMP communications interface to certain key equipment to provide further performance details assisting preventative maintenance subsequently improved availability for network transmission.

Aston Dane has recently been appointed by Gleeson Construction Services (the new M&E division of MJ Gleeson) to carry out the data acquisition and monitoring configuration work for Adjile, an Aston Dane Enterprise Management Information Solution supporting their Water Treatment and Distribution operations, for the upgrade of the rapid gravity filters at Hampton Advanced Water Treatment Works. AD will work alongside the system integrator responsible for the upgrade of the PLC network ensuring a seamless change over of the filters. The majority of AD work will be completed by February 2007 at which point the company will be engaged to assist with the commissioning of individual filters as they become available over a planned 24 month programme

 The scheme will see the replacement of the obsolete control equipment with a new PLC based solution providing improved control system reliability and integrity based on redundant Rockwell Logix PLC equipment to carry out the main management of the plant area. These will be assisted by a subnetwork of over 32 PLCs and local operator stations to control the individual filters and ancillary equipment with a local area  SCADA system.

 AD are expecting to be involved in other future work on this site during AMP4 including the disinfection upgrade and the new water ring main shaft projects.

 For further details of Aston Dane's Adjile Enterprise SCADA system  Click here

New Document Management Solution for Thames Water

 Thames Water Utilities has recently placed a significant order with Aston Dane for the delivery of ADvance Dmi, a web enabled documentation management and launching application to securely manage the project documentation that supports the development and rollout of London Water Supply Enterprise Wide SCADA, ADjile,  a solution developed and implemented by Aston Dane. The order includes server hardware and licenses and will be delivered preconfigured, network ready for immediate access. Due to the ongoing development of the London Water Supply Infrastructure and the scale of documents that support their system, Thames realise the value of this solution to facilitate Project Engineers, Operations Management and Maintenance personnel with convenient viewing access and enable a managed environment for ongoing lifecycle development.

 For further details of Aston Dane ADvance isuite and the modules available including ADvance Dmi  Click here

In April this year Part 4 of ISA S88.00 Batch Control was finally released. This document has been long awaited and covers reference model for developing applications for the storage and/or exchange of batch production records. Implementations based upon this standard will allow retrieval, analysis, and reporting of selected batch production record data. Although this standard is intended primarily for batch processes, it may be of considerable value for other types of processes.

Chris Marklew, a Senior Consultant for Aston Dane served as a member of the ISA-SP88 Part 4 Working Group, which was responsible for preparing this standard, believes this will help to unlock real business benefits for users of Manufacturing Information through application of appropriate technology and structured methods. There is now a growing trend within the manufacturing sector to drive down into their production systems and obtain useful information to their organizations. Typical examples of this may be any or all of these points illustrated to draw out real value for operational improvements and regulatory support purposes.

•  Storing and retrieving manufacturing data centrally for improved management

•  Remote visualisation of processes via web clients to improve decision making processes

•  Process performance trending and comparisons e.g. with golden batch/ campaign/ shift etc

•  Metrics sharing on a world-wide basis to improve performance analysis and improvement opportunities

•  On line deviation checking

•  Electronic batch record generation

•  Peak load checking on utilities e.g. to verify capacity / improve utilities management

•  Electronic Batch Records to support operations

•  Logging of GMP related alarms and events

•  Inter-site production operation processes sharing

•  On line deviation checking and reporting

•  Predictive maintenance to reduce future downtime

•  Utilities monitoring - cost based accounting, trends of demand, batch related demand, remote monitoring

•  Provision of a system to enable automated data capture of a wide variety of parameters which could support the provision of an audit trail for regulatory compliance and for technology transfer into development and production stages, and process optimisation and intensification.

•  Data and information exists mainly in a paper format.  Therefore data extraction and reporting is very difficult, inefficient and time consuming.

•  Significant amounts of resources may be used in routine or repetitive administrative tasks which, although vital, could be automated and assist the reporting and optimisation functions.

•  Access to real-time, up to date accurate information.

Aston Dane has available solutions using best of breed products that can support client needs for Operational Performance Analysis and Improvements to Manufacturing and Utilities Processes.  Click here for more details

Thames Water Construction Awards

 Costain Ltd have recently won a number of Thames Water Construction Awards on projects which Aston Dane have been involved. The projects are as follows:

 ELRED

 Most Environmentally Friendly Project - 1st Prize

Large Water Projects - 2nd Prize

This project involved the borehole abstraction from 10 railway drainage water borehole around the East London area into a new water treatment plant in the East Ham area of London.  Aston Dane's contribution included the control and monitoring of the boreholes, control of the transmission into supply, provision of the site SCADA system and integration into the LWS SCADA system.  The project had more than its fair share of technical challenges, notably the extensive use of the new modems, communications access to the remote sites, complex blending and transmission algorithms and the implementation of new communications protocols.  Aston Dane have received praise from the Costain project team for the professional and dedicated approach taken in resolving some very difficult technical issues under relentless pressure.

Ashford West Disinfection

Small Water Project - 1st Prize 

This project involved the replacement of an existing gas based disinfection system with a liquid dosing system.  Aston Dane's contribution was the integration of the automated equipment data from the plant into the RTAP SCADA system.  Due to the timing of the project, the interface required intermediate works to provide reliable communications  This project also had some technical challenges but was delivered successfully and professionally.  As a result of Aston Dane's professional approach, further orders for a high operational risk project have been received and are underway. 

For further information regarding Aston Dane RTAP SCADA System click here

Aston Dane, one of the UK and Ireland’s leading process automation solutions and technical consultancy services companies, is pleased to confirm the appointment of Brian Nicholson, formerly a Strategic Account and District Sales Manager with Rockwell Automation, to promote the companies aggressive development strategy for profitable business in the Power Utilities Industry and Service Support Sectors across all areas of the companies target market industries.

For further information click here