Nippon Gases, one of Europe’s largest suppliers of industrial and medical gases, has embarked on a five-year programme to modernise control systems across 18 of its production sites, in a bid to improve asset utilisation, cut downtime, and reduce the risk of equipment obsolescence.
The company, part of Japan’s Nippon Sanso Holdings Corporation, is replacing ageing Rockwell controllers with newer ControlLogix programmable logic controllers supplied by Rockwell Automation, the US-based industrial automation group. The upgrades will be implemented across air separation units in multiple European countries.
The modernisation plan, developed jointly by Rockwell Automation and Nippon Gases’ engineering team, aims to standardise control systems across the company’s operations. The first phase of the programme is under way at a pilot plant in Avilés, northern Spain, which will serve as a benchmark for subsequent rollouts.
“By standardising on a single PLC solution, we can benchmark the migration process at the pilot plant and then fine tune it for subsequent sites,” said José María Martínez Gallo, Operations Director for Europe at Nippon Gases. “The new digitalised hardware will also give us much deeper insights into our processes, allowing us to realise greater efficiency while lowering energy use and waste.”
Rockwell Automation said the new process-control modules would give Nippon Gases greater operational flexibility and pave the way for future technology upgrades, including the potential introduction of artificial intelligence to enable more autonomous operations.
“The deployment of contemporary process-control modules opens up a world of opportunity for Nippon Gases,” said Rodrigo Riera, Rockwell Automation’s Regional Vice-President for Southern Europe. “It can look more confidently to the future, with greater agility for further evolution, alongside the potential to add AI for even greater efficiencies.”
