Industry

Packaging machinery

Country

Germany

Software

Siemens TIA Portal · S7-1500 · WinCC · PROFINET

Duration

48-hour migration window

Siemens S5 to S7-1500 migration — 12 stations in one weekend

The situation

A packaging machine manufacturer needed to retire end-of-life Siemens S5 controllers across a live 12-station production line at a customer facility. The customer’s production schedule allowed only a single weekend shutdown window — the new S7-1500 system had to be fully operational by Monday morning. There was no option for a staged migration or a partial cutover. The system either worked completely at the end of the 48-hour window, or it did not.

What GFE did

GFE re-coded all 12 stations from scratch in TIA Portal, mapping every I/O signal to PROFINET field devices and updating the WinCC SCADA to reflect the new hardware. A parallel validation approach was used in the weeks before the cutover, allowing the new code to be tested against the running system without interrupting production. The 48-hour shutdown window was used to execute a migration that had already been fully prepared and validated. Monday morning: all 12 stations operational, SCADA live, customer production running on schedule.

Results

12 stations

migrated in one weekend

0 downtime

during migration

S5 → S7-1500

full replatform

WinCC live

from Monday morning

Monday morning the line was running. We couldn’t believe it.

Why GFE for PLC programming

Each project is staffed with engineers experienced on the relevant platform — TIA Portal, TwinCAT, Pilz, or Rockwell.

Practical experience with EN ISO 13849, SISTEMA calculations, and SRP/CS documentation for CE marking and TÜV review.

Support can be engaged for a single project or structured as a long-term team extension — without permanent hiring.

All team members are fluent in English, with additional language skills in German, Italian, Spanish, and more.

Have a PLC migration, new machine, or safety certification project?

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Contact us

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Head office

30, Estrady, Warsaw, Poland 01-932

Phone: +48 798 763 604

For general enquiries: info@gfe-solutions.com

For sales enquiries: inquiry@gfe-solutions.com

Back office

201/203, Kharkivske shose,Kyiv, Ukraine 02121

Email: info@gfe-solutions.com

Phone: +38 098 237 0047

Our customers

Our company produces safety-relevant welding assemblies for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.

Due to the fact that it has become increasingly difficult to find good engineers and designers for our design department at our location in rural Münsterland, we set out at the end of 2018 to look for new external solutions in the service market.

 

Christian Menke

CEO V. KRANZ GmbH, Dülmen

I really appreciate GFE’s flexibility and openness for new challenges. They are not afraid to start a new journey.
If I think about the external circumstances of the project we started together, we reached a learning curve and relating results that I did personally not expect.

Daniel Ilge

Head of Technology & Product Management at WALDRICH COBURG GmbH

We required additional capacity and professional support for our R&D Team especially for a new product development.

And GFE Solutions offers capable support by very well-educated engineers. High professionalism. On time delivery and great communication (native German speakers).

Frank Pfister

CEO of CVS engineering GmbH

We are the company in constant need for plants for research or pilot projects of our clients. Last year we were working over the order in the field of medical technologies, which we succeeded to realize, including thanks to efforts of GFE Solutions team.

Dr. Thomas Bauer

Chief operating officer and member of the Board of DIENES Apparatebau GmbH

We were in need of help with our design department ressources and we had to move fast, internal ressources were not available and GFE was able to help quickly and competent. GFE works with dedication to the very needs of its customers, has a variety of specialists and has offered a fair price on a transparent basis.

Sebastian Schuelke

Managing Director at SICON GmbH

We were looking for additional engineers to expand our construction capacity. You seemed to be a young, motivated Team and except your professional expertise, your personal commitment made me confident to work with you. The cooperation has been seamless and very productive from the start. We are happy with the results.

Lukas Jochimek

Technical Manager at Schauenburg Maschinen- und Anlagen-Bau GmbH

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