Crystal-clear drinking water flows from the taps of the 1.7 million people living in North Holland. All thanks to PWN: the organisation that treats surface waters to produce drinking water. They are supported technically by PWNT: a wholly owned subsidiary. PWNT specialises in the most innovative water treatment technologies. Not just for North Holland, but for drinking water companies around the world. So there is a lot of knowledge and expertise available at PWNT. They asked us to work on a software standard library that would let their process engineers implement innovations without having to constantly modify the software.
Bright minds in water treatment engineering
No one can dispute it: the Netherlands is a highly progressive water engineering country. The North Holland water treatment plant, operated by PWNT, is a jewel in the crown of this innovative sector. The water treatment engineers there are nothing if not ambitious. They want to constantly improve their professional knowledge and implement the latest innovations. Among other things, that means testing, testing and more testing. But you obviously don’t want all that testing to have a negative effect on what you have already built. So PWNT commissioned us to create a software standard library. One that ensures that PWNT’s process engineers can continue to test and carry out optimisation work with confidence, without constantly modifying the software.
Standard library for greater efficiency
We grasped the opportunity with both hands and were soon working on a software standard library for PWNT’s water treatment installation. Some background info will be useful here: PWNT’s installation comprises several parts. The parts can be combined, resulting in a complete working installation. The advantage of a modular installation like this is that you can deliver exactly what the customer demands. In the case of PWNT, this allows them to deliver exactly the desired water treatment result.
But the more combinations you offer, the more software engineering is required. To solve this, we developed a smart software library for PWNT. Thanks to this software, PWNT can now put together the configuration without having to come up with a complete new software engineering design for each project.
The result
The software standard library was created in partnership with PWNT. We worked closely with PWNT’s process engineers and used their functional data sheets. The software was created with Siemens TIA Portal and features a dashboard. This dashboard lists all the changes and also explains their impact. An ideal tool for keeping track of tests and optimisations.
“For PWNT, securing our process knowledge and continuously improving it is essential. At the same time, we need flexibility to make changes without compromising the integrity of that knowledge. The software is an essential element in this process. PWNT and DWG complement each other in this area. Bringing these two worlds together was (and is) a challenging journey. PWNT looks forward to applying this newly developed software in one of its new projects!”
Rick Bakker, Team Manager Technology Development & Engineering Department, PWNT.
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