Yawal is a leading Polish producer of multiple types of aluminum profiles.
What was the business need?
Client’s production process is deeply integrated with their automated warehouse, which, unfortunately, is no longer supported by its manufacturer and was in urgent need of upgrades to support the factory’s growth. The warehouse control software relied on the PROFIBUS communication protocol, which restricted potential integrations with modern Warehouse Management Systems. Additionally, the software was becoming rapidly outdated, and without dedicated support, it was impossible to extend the warehouse with new processes and features.
What was the challenge?
The legacy software, written in Visual Basic, lacked documentation for the application, PLCs, and the data exchange protocol and processes. This required us to analyze, test, debug, and thoroughly document the entire communication protocol.
We then migrated it from PROFIBUS to PROFINET, overcoming additional challenges caused by a custom, undocumented byte order translation process between host and network. To ensure the new solution functioned identically, we created a full simulation of the entire warehouse system. Finally, we deployed the solution during a tightly constrained maintenance window, where minimizing downtime was absolutely critical.
How did we do it?
We began by enhancing the existing software with a logger and analyzer to capture all PROFIBUS packets, allowing us to fully map the communication protocol used to exchange and queue commands for the robots. Next, we cloned all PLCs and created a precise replica of the warehouse in Siemens Technomatix. The software was then launched, connected to a new set of PLCs and the digital replica, and transitioned to the new protocol. After several months of debugging, the software was finalized, all issues were resolved, and it is now prepared for trial deployment in production.
