Why Enterprise Alert
When a machine has a problem or needs maintenance it is often just indicated by an indicator lamp or by a small display attached to the machine. However, during daily operations, the plant manager cannot check each machine all the time. For a smooth and uninterrupted production process, it is essential to know when a machine is in a critical status or needs maintenance.
Take your PLC display with you. Pairing PLC’s with Enterprise Alert can enhance your daily operations by informing maintenance teams, production managers, or engineers on the shop floor or in the field about critical machine states no matter where they are.
How it Works
A Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is an industrial, often ruggedized, device for controlling manufacturing processes, such as machines, assembly lines, or robots. PLC’s can have various digital and analog inputs and outputs for connecting sensors and actors. They can thus be used for consolidating data from temperature, humidity or vibration sensors, light barriers, or from I/O contacts.
All it takes to pair PLC’s and Enterprise Alert is a connector app that accesses and processed the PLC data using the S7 protocol and from there sends REST requests to Enterprise Alert and thus an alert the responsible team.
Integration Capabilities
Alert on critical IoT device states
Scenarios
In our example, we use a PLC with a couple of I/O contacts connected. We retrieve the I/O information from the PLC and send an alert to our Enterprise Alert team in case an I/O contact is closed.
A preexisting Enterprise Alert installation with Users, Teams, and a preconfigured REST endpoint
A PLC (supporting the S7 protocol)
IP | Primary Key |
IP | IP address of the PLC |
Rack | S7 rack identifier |
Slot | S7 slot identifier |
Message | An additional message parameter for the event |
Location | An additional location parameter for the event |
Priority | Alert priority |
AlertAddress | The address within the PLC to be queried |
AlertOn | Value that the PLC address must get to fire the event |
Besides this, the Enterprise Alert webhook URL including the API Key needs to be configured in the connector app. The app will query the PLCs in certain intervals and send events to Enterprise Alert when a condition is met, in our case when an I/O contact is closed.
Please contact us for more information about how to obtain the connector app.
Notifications within the Enterprise Alert mobile app
Enterprise Alert comes complete with a mobile app allowing for all critical alert details to be seen from anywhere. Users can acknowledge and take ownership of alerts and with remote actions, even resolve them. Team members collaborate with their peers so that even if an on-call person is not the SME, that person is easily within reach via voice call, text or email.
A centralized Alert Center can be viewed from the web portal. All alerts, whether active, overdue or closed are visible to EA admins. Ownership and even delegation is as easy as drag-and-dropping the alert to the person/team.