The problem#
A cold-storage and vegetable-processing plant runs on ammonia refrigeration, a packing hall, and a floor full of machines that all have to be watched at once. The screens that ship with that hardware are the screens that always ship with that hardware — grey, modal, drawn in 2009, and impossible to read at a glance during a 22:00 fault.
The people running the plant deserve to see it the way it actually behaves: as flow, as state, as something alive.
The approach#
Build the whole plant from one model, then draw it.
Everything on screen descends from a single asset tree — a container (a room) holds equipment or nested sub-container rooms; equipment is assembled from components; every component carries its own data points and controls. Pipes connect them. Get that hierarchy right once and every screen composes from the same primitives, so a new machine is a new arrangement of known parts — not a new drawing.
On top of the model sits the mimic: each equipment renders as a live mini-P&ID with animated refrigerant, air, oil and water flow, spinning fans and rotors, and honest on/off state — green when it runs, red when it trips.
The grey HMI that ships with the plant is a liability at 2 a.m. The mimic should read like the process, not like a settings menu.
What it does#
- Draws the full asset catalog — 17 components, 23 equipment types, 3 sub-container rooms and 6 container shells — every one a live, self-describing tile.
- Animates each equipment as a real process loop: suction-to-discharge on a screw compressor, return-spray-to-sump on a falling-film chiller, DX evaporators chilling the cold and frozen rooms.
- Wires data points and controls straight to the floor over Modbus — refrigeration equipment opens a full inspect / control drawer; process-line machines are driven on the mimic.
- Carries state honestly across the board: plant load, compressors running, active alarms, system time — the numbers an operator checks first.
What's next#
The asset catalog is the built-out part — components, equipment, sub-containers, containers and pipes are all drawn and live. The console pages that stitch them into operating screens — the plant overview, the equipment console and the schematic composer — are still work in progress, real but rough.
First home is the Sunshine Vegetables plant. If you run NH₃ refrigeration or a processing line and the screens are fighting you, the contact form is the right place to start.