OVERVIEW:
A major player in the baking industry, specializing in the production of baked goods, was looking for an “All-In-One” manufacturing platform that would allow them to centralize the control and monitoring for an entire greenfield site. The site consisted of two production lines, approximately 20 pieces of equipment per line, which included bulk, liquid and manual ingredient handling systems; mixing systems; forming systems; baking systems and packaging systems.
SOLUTION:
Since the problem spanned multiple areas, the solution was broken down into several applications on namely a Raw Materials System (RMS), a Line Control System (LCS) and an Environmental Monitoring System (EMS).
For the RMS application, screens were created for controlling and monitoring the bulk, liquids, and manual ingredient processes. This included process and instrumentation (P&ID) screens for all ingredient storage and delivery and a sugar grinding system. Ad-hoc and pre-defined trending screens were created to provide access to historical data of key metrics like weight and device states. Mixer recipe control screens were created to allow operators to load recipes and control the delivery of automated ingredients and mixers. Transaction groups were created to track actual and target weights, along with the contextual information, of every ingredient delivery to provide raw ingredient traceability. Alarming screens were included to track current and historical alarms from several PLCs and subsystems. Finally, various batch report templates were created to provide on demand access to historical batching information.
For the Line Control System (LCS) application, screens were created for Work Order creation, Equipment and Work Order Status tracking, Impromptu Analyses with some pre-configured analyses, ad-hoc and pre-defined trending for KPIs, and PDF report viewing. Additional functionality was included to allow for the tracking of food waste generated by the production lines by creating a screen that allows users to weigh bins and add additional contextual information like bin location, prior to the bin being emptied for an external company’s collection.
The Environmental Monitoring System is used for the collection and monitoring of environmental temperature and humidity throughout their facilities. Screens were created for system overview showing real-time node information and location in the facility in map and tabular form. There is also a trending screen to view historical data, and configuration pages to configure contextual data like name, location and alarm limits. Finally, alarm status and journal screens are included to provide feedback based on user configuration when temperature or humidity fall outside of acceptable ranges. Having this application already created on Ignition allowed us to easily import it into the new greenfield facility.
Since the creation of these applications for the customer’s greenfield plant, they have gone on to implement similar projects using these as templates at several facilities providing a cohesive look and feel and structure to their applications across multiple facilities.
RESULTS:
- Operational Efficiency: The implementation of Raw Materials Management and batching, data collection / visualization and a waste tracking solution, provided the customer with the capability of quick and informed decision-making, helping increase productivity and reduce downtime.
- Cost Savings: Using the Environmental Monitoring solution and Waste tracking solution, the customer was able to monitor the environmental conditions of the facility. Through this the customer was able to save on potential quality lost product due to poor environmental conditions.
- Scalability: Through the systems modular design, it allowed for progressive expansion of solutions and applications developed for customer needs at the right time, making it a scalable solution that was able to grow with the plant over time.
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