In this presentation given at the 2014 Siemens Automation Summit in Orlando, FL, John Sullivan offers Siemens best practices when leveraging existing Rockwell Code. John talks about types of conversions, including Line by Line, Complete Rewrite and Selective Rewrite, as well as specific customer situations, solutions, challenges and benefits.

1. Restricted © Siemens Industry, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved. usa.siemens.com/summit
Automation Summit
A User Conference - June 23 – 25, 2014

2. Restricted © Siemens Industry, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved. usa.siemens.com/summit
John Sullivan
Utilizing Siemens Best Practices When
Leveraging Existing Rockwell Code

3. Presenter Info
John Sullivan
Senior Project Engineer
Siemens Certified Professional
Professional Engineer- Control Systems
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
With DMC since 2009

4. DMC Company Profile
Industries Served:
Automotive
Chemical and Food
Processing
Electronics/Semiconductor
Hydraulics
Laboratory Testing
Machine Tool
Material Handling
Metal Converting
Packaging
Pharmaceutical
Printing & Textiles
Established in 1996, offices in Chicago, Boston,
Denver & customers throughout the world
employees & growing
70+

5. Areas of Expertise

6. MANUFACTURING
AUTOMATION & INTELLIGENCE
PLC Programming
Motion Control
Engineering &
Servo Systems
HMI & SCADA
Expertise
Intelligent Data
& Web Based
Systems
Vision Inspection
Expertise
Robotics

7. TEST & MEASUREMENT AUTOMATION
NI FPGA
LabVIEW
Development
Test Stand Design
Machine Vision
Data Analysis &
Reporting
NI Real-Time

8. CUSTOM SOFTWARE
& HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT
PC Application
Development
Product
Development
Web Application,
iOS, Android &
App Development
Embedded
Design &
Programming
SDK, API
& Driver
Development
Database Systems

9. MICROSOFT CONSULTING SERVICES
10
10
5
5
INDIVIDUAL
CERTIFICATIONS

10. Agenda
• Why Convert?
• Types of Conversions
• Line by Line
• Complete Rewrite
• Selective Rewrite
• Specific Customer Situation
• Solution
• Challenges
• Benefits
• Questions

11. Why
Convert?
• Expand to new markets
• Hardware/software
improvements
• Match company standards
• Spec Job

12. How to Convert from Rockwell to
Siemens?

13. How to
Convert
from
Rockwell to
Siemens
• Line by Line Conversion
• Complete Rewrite
• Selective Rewrite

14. Line by Line

15. Line by Line: Pros
Straight
Forward

16. Line by Line: Pros
Easy for Current
Programmers

17. Line by Line: Pros
Siemens Tool
On the Way

18. Line by Line: Cons
Breaks Best
Practices

19. Line by Line: Cons
Usually Not
Most Efficient

20. Line by Line: Cons
Potential for
Weird Hang-ups

21. Line by Line

22. Line by Line

23. Line by Line

24. Line by Line

25. Line by Line
• Pros
• Straight Forward
• Siemens Tool in development
• Easy for customers familiar
with current AB software to
navigate
• Cons
• Breaks Siemens programming
best practices
• Not most efficient for
Siemens system
• Potential Hang-ups

26. Complete Rewrite: Pros
Best Practices

27. Complete Rewrite: Pros
IEC61131-3

28. Complete Rewrite: Pros
Optimization

29. Complete Rewrite: Cons
Existing
Programmers

30. Complete Rewrite: Cons
Time

31. Complete Rewrite: Cons
Lost Legacy
Knowledge

32. Complete Rewrite
• Pros
• Can use best practices
• IEC631131-3
• Optimization
• Cons
• Existing programmers difficulty
• Typically more time consuming (but not always)
• Lost Legacy Knowledge

33. Selective Rewrite
The best tool for an AB to
Siemens conversion is a
experience person with
expertise in both platforms.

34. Selective Rewrite: Pros
Best Practices

35. Selective Rewrite: Pros
Leverage existing
knowledge

36. Selective Rewrite: Pros
Engineer
Ramp-up

37. Selective Rewrite: Cons
Requires higher
level design

38. Selective Rewrite: Cons
Missing some
improvements

39. Selective Rewrite: Cons
Time

40. Selective Rewrite
• Pros
• Implements some best practices
• Leverages some of existing code
• Some familiarity to existing code.
• Cons
• Requires some higher level design to
pick and choose what to reuse
• Some instances of not using best practices
• Typically more time consuming (but not always)

41. • Line By Line
• Project is small and stable
(relatively few changes over time)
• Complete Rewrite
• Customer is moving all machines to Siemens;
investing training time to use Siemens hardware
the best possible way.
• Anticipating regular hardware and software changes
and machine upgrades
• Selective Rewrite
• Customer has a lot of time invested in existing code
• Customer wants to maintain both lines
simultaneously.
How to Pick (guidelines)

42. Project Details

43. Customer Situation
• OEM with existing equipment they had been developing
in Rockwell for 20+ years
• Wanted capability to sell to growing Siemens business in
Europe and the Americas.
• Had a large team of talented engineers very familiar
with AB, but new to Siemens
• Wanted to ensure best practices with Siemens hardware
and easy maintenance for an AB and Siemens line

44. Selective Rewrite

45. What do we rewrite?
• Rewrite
• Motion
• Any repetitive code (and there was lots of it)
• Translate Directly
• State Machine Decision Logic
• Basic Alarm Signals

46. Motion: Servos
• Utilized Open Motion Commands on S7-1516.
• Looks and feels very similar to AB, which was big
customer plus.

47. Motion: Servos

48. Motion: Servos

49. Motion: VFDs
• VFDs
• Utilized Telegram messaging.
• Wrapped up Telegram messaging inside FB to make
change easier
• Used because customer had more servos and VFDs
(axes) than the 1516 allowed (and didn’t want to
upgrade PLCs)

50. Repetitive Code
• Biggest opportunity for success
• Keep in mind IEC 61131-3

51. Repetitive Code AB Sensor

52. Repetitive Code AB Sensor

53. New Code- Siemens Sensor FB

54. New Code- Siemens Sensor FB

55. Repetitive Code AB Cylinder

56. Repetitive Code AB Cylinder

57. Repetitive Code AB Cylinder

58. Repetitive Code AB Cylinder

59. New Code- Siemens Cylinder FB

60. Challenges
• Comments
• Open Motion Number of
Axes
• Keeping Code Structure

61. Comments

62. Comments

63. • Customer wanted to use a 1516 for cost and capability.
• 1516 is limited to 20 Axes
• Solved issue by using Open Motion Commands for
servos, and telegram messaging for VFDs running in
speed control.
Open Motion Limits

64. • Due to the copy paste nature of the previous AB code
they had arranged things different.
• A cylinder had logic in 3-4 different places.
• Solution was to make 2 different FBs. One for control
and one for alarms to mirror code placement as best as
possible.
Keeping Code Structure
A
A
B
B
C
C

65. Project Benefits
For the customer…
Leveraged 20 years of code
and development
Eased training for field service
team
Easy for customer to make
changes to both product lines
General benefit…
Allowed us to use the best
features of the Siemens
hardware
Eased the customer into the
new software which improved
their impression.

66. Final Thoughts & Questions?

67. Restricted © Siemens Industry, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved. usa.siemens.com/summit
John Sullivan John.Sullivan@dmcinfo.com
303.927.0191 www.dmcinfo.com
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