F.A.I.M. chooses the Topkapi monitoring solution

The system was designed not only to enable monitoring and controlling the quality and quantity of flour produced in all the production sites, but also as a major evolution in an automated tax audit.45 flour mills are currently connected to the Federation.

A supervision solution for controlled mill activity control 

They each include: 

• A sealed cabinet guaranteeing reliable information is transmitted.
• A Yokogawa recorder ensuring data acquisition.
• An IEA smart display acquiring information from the recorders through an RS422 link, and forwarding it to a remote terminal unit (RTU).
• A Perax P200Xm remote management unit (RTU) storing the data before forwarding it to the TOPKAPI mainframe through the telephone network.

Each RTU processes about 20 variables. Transmitting the information to the supervisor is performed automatically once per day, or in the case of alarm, or finally upon manual operator request.

These variables enable checking the activity of the F.A.I.M. mills : real time interrogation, forwarding alarms with their triggering time (failures on scales, information measurement and transmission chains, power supply, thresholds exceeded, opening the sealed cabinet containing the measurement system, etc.), forwarding measurements at periodic sampling times (production curves). The summary reports, including all the variables mentioned, can be printed and/or sent through e-mail for processing by the tax audit services.

The main advantages provided by Topkapi in this type of application are :

• Automatic data acquisition and interrogation, using the switched telephone network as a transmission media.
• Plotting curves for all types of variables time-stamped by the RTUs.
• Ability to communicate with a broad variety of controllers connected to various types of networks.
• Concurrent communication over a large number of modems.
• Printing reports which can be used by other software packages, such as EXCEL, ACCESS, etc.

The system, integrated by IEA (Ingenieria Electronica Argentina), was approved by the Argentina government for its use in the ONCA tax audit organization,, because it offers a high level of security in data transmission and processing (impossible to change, alter, or delete data).