Vinavil is a household name in Italy, synonymous with a wide range of high quality glues.

The company joined the Mapei group in 1994 as part of the purchase of the Enichem Synthesis business.
It has production sites in Villadossola and Ravenna in Italy, as well as an international presence with Vinavil North America, its subsidiary company, which has production facilities in Montreal and Chicago.
Recently, the company has built a production plant in Suez, Egypt, to manufacture products specially suited to the local market. Approximately 25percent of production is supplied to Mapei as raw material for its market leading tile adhesives, special cements and additives.
Vinavil produces various types of polymers which are used as adhesives or bonding agents. Batches of raw materials are mixed and heated in reactors. Subsequently, the product is purified by distillation and mixed with additional chemicals to make the finished product. Customer orders are fulfilled within three to four days from receipt. Because of the short lead times, it is necessary for the plant to be flexible in operation to ensure deliveries are met and production is optimised.
Prior to the purchase by Mapei, all Vinavil plants were operated manually and had few systems in place to allow the coordination of system recipes and resources. In keeping with its corporate philosophy to adopt new technology to improve productivity, the environment and quality of life for their neighbours and staff, Mapei decided that extensive automation was required.
In 1995 a project was initiated at the Villadossola site to install a control system in one plant area that would optimise yield, allow repeatable production, improve working conditions and make it easier to fulfil safety and environmental regulations. Additional requirements were that the system must be easy to program and have a user friendly man/machine interface. The project comprised a traditional DCS solution with HART field instruments, the majority of which were provided by Emerson Process Management.
More recently Emerson supplied PlantWeb digital plant architecture on a further project, making Vinavil one of the earliest Italian adopters of this technology.
The decision to install PlantWeb was made after an extensive review of the various solutions available. At the outset of the project Vinavil decided that not only did it want to automate the plant, but also that it wanted to minimise initial capital expenditure (Capex) and optimise operating expenditure (Opex). The review looked at both the hardware systems and the added value that the software programs offered, particularly in relation to the asset management capabilities. Vinavil felt that Emerson was one of the few suppliers able to fully satisfy its various and complex requirements.
The PlantWeb solution includes intelligent field devices, scalable platforms, which in this instance includes a DeltaV digital automation system and integrated modular software, including AMS predictive maintenance software (Fig. 2). The ability of the PlantWeb solution to communicate using different open communications protocols was a key benefit to Vinavil who chose to adopt different solutions for different areas of the plant, dependant on the control requirements.
It was expected that Capex savings would be made through simpler installation, reduced commissioning time and a reduction in cabling costs. Opex savings were expected due to the ability of the field instrumentation to generate alarms related to their condition as well as being able to diagnose faults in the instrumentation through the use of AMS software. These abilities would help to reduce maintenance costs and assure process availability.
The project saw the automation being applied to three areas of the Villadossola site in stages. The plant areas that were automated were the polyvinyl acetate emulsion system, the acrylic emulsion system and the spray dryer system. Communication in all three areas is performed using FOUNDATION fieldbus digital communications protocol. The polyvinyl acetate emulsion plant later added ProfiBus DP communications for on/off valves, sensors and motor control centres.

OPC technology has been used to transfer data between the control system on the polyvinyl acetate emulsion systems and acrylic emulsions system, enabling the company to divide the management of common operations such as clean in place (CIP) and tank farm management (Fig. 3). OPC is an open communications protocol that allows the transfer of data between different software solutions, without the need to write custom interfaces.
Vinavil has seen many benefits from the installation of PlantWeb. Cabling costs have been reduced by 30percent; in addition, start up and commissioning times have been minimised by using 'plug and play' functionality of the system components, achieving a time saving of about 50percent. Both of these savings contributed to an overall 15percent reduction in Capex.
The autotuning capabilities of the DeltaV system have led to reductions in the time taken to tune a loop as well as ensuring a greater consistency of product quality. PlantWeb helped Vinavil in order to improve system availability and flexibility, through the simplification of the management and maintenance of field instrumentation by using the AMS software. The audit trail functionality, which registers all the activities related to the field devices, has simplified the record keeping required as part of the Vinavil's quality certification.
Vinavil is currently evaluating additions to its software, such as ValveLink, an AMS SNAP-ON that enables the diagnosis and monitoring of control valve condition. Also being evaluated are additional OPC links to allow data to be imported from the R&D department, as well as DeltaV WebServer to import data from the Suez system in order to monitor and control the operation of that plant.