Digital ID card for industrial valves
The DIN SPEC 91406 / IEC 61406 and VDI
2770 standards provide support for digitisation in the valve industry .
By Michael Hasselbach , Digital Innovation Lab Expert at
AS-Schneider .
To further drive digitisation in the process industry , manufacturers should supply clearly identifiable devices and make standardised product data available digitally . The DIN SPEC 91406 / IEC 61406 and VDI 2770 standards provide support in this regard . The valve manufacturer AS-Schneider labels its valves with a QR code : This gives customers easy access to valve specifications and technical documents .
No more paper
No more printed drawings , certificates , test documents , and maintenance and installation manuals for new products : large quantities of paper are neither sustainable nor up-to-date in the age of digitalisation . That ’ s why companies from the process industry developed DIN SPEC 91406 . The committee included representatives from BASF , Covestro , Bayer , Lanxess , Siemens , Endress + Hauser , Yokogawa , Emerson , ABB and many other companies . The standard now provides a common framework for uniquely identifying products . Manufacturers assign a serial number to each item , with a predetermined composition that is internationally valid . This customised number ( ID ) is encoded via QR codes or RFID tags and is attached to the product . Those responsible intend to internationalise DIN SPEC 91406 soon and replace it with the international IEC standard 61406 . The standard should thus become more relevant as users in the process industry demand the technology more . Valve manufacturers do not expect any changes in content as a result of internationalisation .
Relevant in all phases of the device life cycle
Orders and items can be tracked using the unique ID number . Manufacturers , OEMs , plant planners and operators can use device identification to access product-specific documents and information on maintenance plans and spare parts services . For example , companies can use it to provide technical drawings , operating instructions and material certificates . Once the valves have been uninstalled , the ID enables users to dispose of the products properly and sustainably . In short , the one-to-one ID is relevant in all phases of the product life cycle , from manufacture to disposal , thus contributing to the circular economy in the future . The VDI 2770 standard offers another perspective for documenting product information digitally . It focuses on the structure of digital manufacturer information and data for the process industry . The core idea of the standard : it uses the PDF format for human-readable documents and the XML format for machinereadable documents . The manufacturer packs all the information belonging to a product into a so-called document container ( ZIP file ). The customer then processes the data in a standardised manner . This could be an employee in the goods receiving department checking the
Classification of manufacturer ’ s data according to VDI 2770 . π www . valve-world . net Valve World November 2022
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