The U.S. Navy "The MCM on the MCM"

Danetta Bramhall

Not only have industrial companies around the world found uses for ProSoft's MCM, it's also found its way into some of the United States Navy's ships. That's right, the MCM is now on the MCM, Mine Counter Measure Ships, that is.

In 1998, the Navy needed to backfit its Minesweeper fleet. These ships are used to hunt mines and sweep them so larger, amphibious ships can move closer to shore allowing for vehicles and military personnel to move onto, and secure a beach head. Although this class of ship is very small in size, it has a significant importance to the United States Navy.

The 14 ships in this fleet were plagued with equipment that was no longer supported, making it difficult to obtain spare parts, and it had a voltage signal degradation problem. The Navy further mandated that the new system be based on PLC technology because of its wide application and success in the commercial control industry. The Integrated Condition Assessment System (ICAS) provided real time conditions-based monitoring. Essentially, the ICAS is a LAN that provides control and monitoring of various shipboard systems-firemain, propulsion, auxiliary seawater cooling, lube oil, fuel oil, etc.-with the capability of taking on additional systems.

Allen-Bradley's RS LINX was used as the middleware to import real-time process data from the control system PLCs. ProSoft's Modbus Module was installed in the A-B PLCs to communicate with some of the maintenance end devices.

The new system has reduced scheduled maintenance, increased system and equipment awareness, increased data availability, reduced manpower requirements and equipment life cycle costs and increased performance and reliability.