Challenge
Communication is an essential tool for operational efficiency. Poor communication across manufacturing departments and their control technology can result in production downtime, inferior product quality, unhappy customers, and ultimately the loss of focus as an industry leader. After all, a company’s expertise is their product and generally not control system communications. When one of the world’s largest almond processing companies became unsatisfied with their legacy SCADA system and its limited report capacity, E Tech Group was called to action to support the conversion to a new SCADA system.
Solution
The almond processing company determined Ignition, an industrial application platform from Inductive Automation, was the best platform to standardize their supervisory control and data acquisition across multiple locations. As a Premier Ignition System Integrator, E Tech Group applied their expertise in Ignition implementation to streamline the conversion process and support post-conversion operations. “Complex system upgrades call for advanced expertise. Partnering with a system integrator well-versed in Ignition is essential to drive successful results and a well-executed project”, says Xavier Tristan, Controls Engineer at E Tech Group.
While migrating to the new system, the E Tech Group team resolved network-related challenges and prioritized a user-friendly software design. The team developed screens on the new Ignition platform to closely resemble the company’s legacy system for operator ease and comfort. The goal was to reduce the learning-curve for their client’s workforce as they adopt to the new SCADA system. This enabled the company to enhance their workforce efficiency post-conversion with greater data communications and minimal training costs.
Results
Within a four-month timeframe, the E Tech Group team successfully converted the almond processing company’s legacy SCADA system to Ignition. The new platform equipped the company with enhanced visualization and reporting capabilities to make the right decisions at the right time. This means improved cross-functional efficiency, greater quality assurance, and reduced downtime —all with a more reliable, easier to manage system.
Challenge
Terminating a system integrator can be a difficult decision. From suboptimal performance to poor communication, unfulfilled promises from a failed partnership can be devastating to the project outcome and client-integrator relationship. For one of the world’s largest culinary oil production companies, poor communication and staffing issues with a large system integrator challenged the company to find a new partner for state-side support. E Tech Group was given the opportunity to renew their trust in system integrator partnerships.
Solution
Initially, the international culinary oil company was hesitant to engage with another system integrator, but recognized state-side support was needed to uphold future projects and correct the prior integrator’s missteps. E Tech Group addressed their concerns and explained how their solution-focused culture differentiates from others. “E Tech Group has a strong reputation for delivering best-in-class solutions. Our goal as a cohesive team is to find every opportunity to improve operational efficiency for our customers. This is how we foster confidence as long-term, solution-focused partner”, adds E Tech Group Project Manager, Amit Jadhav.
A key project that needed support was integrating the oil company’s weight scale system with Ignition, an industrial application platform by Inductive Automation, to empower timely data and inventory reporting. The E Tech Group team scheduled weekly status meetings to inform stakeholders on the project’s progress and applied their Solution Experts Business approach by staffing the project with specialized personnel to get the job done right. “This customer was amazed at how fast I could implement their ideas with Ignition.”, remarks E Tech Group Controls Engineer and Ignition subject matter expert, David Schmidt. “E Tech Group has years of experience working hands-on with customers and, with this customer, this resulted in a very smooth development process.”
Result
E Tech Group successfully integrated the Ignition software and is currently on the next step of this engagement — integrating Ignition with the company’s SAP system for enhanced enterprise connectivity. The oil production company was thoroughly impressed with E Tech Group’s commitment to their word, notably their schedule flexibility, transparent communication, and multidisciplinary support approach. The company saw the advantage of having E Tech Group as a trusted partner and committed to an extended support service contract to formalize the new partnership.
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Challenge
Wine consumption in the United States has increased annually over the past ten years. In 2020, the United States alone consumed one billion gallons of wine.[1] The increased demand for wine has amplified the need for technologies to manage wastewater treatments during the winemaking process. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems play an important role in this process by monitoring and analyzing real-time data to address system problems and keep operations running smoothly. When one of the world’s largest wineries needed to address data collection and operational issues at their wastewater facility, E Tech Group was engaged to make their process more sustainable from their existing infrastructure.
Solution
The wastewater process required a large quantity of process data to be routinely sampled and the size of the facility, coupled with the number of sampling tasks, often took operators away from the control screens. This reduced their ability to access up-to-date, manageable information on potential operational problems. E Tech Group’s Senior Controls Engineers determined that the success of this project would rely on centralizing the existing equipment, upgrading to a new SCADA system, and planning for future growth.
The E Tech Group team upgraded the winery’s SCADA system with the ability to notify operators of different priorities of alarms by leveraging their existing FactoryTalk View SE Distributed application. WIN911 software that delivers critical alarms and alerts in real-time was connected to the facility’s FactoryTalk Alarm & Events to notify operators of potential operation issues without requiring duplicated databases. Once installed, an operator could effortlessly receive push alarm notifications through an app on their mobile phone. This allowed the operators to complete routine tasks throughout the facility without the worry of missing critical alarms while away from the control screens.
Results
“Had the facility not been equipped with a SCADA system that was capable of this type of expansion, the controls strategies that now exist would not have been possible and may not have allowed the engineering team to address the process issues” explains a Technical Manager at E Tech Group. This amplifies the importance of long-term infrastructure planning and choosing the right system that can grow with a facility. With a SCADA system investment, the opportunities to control efficiency and mitigate downtime can foster a significant advantage over other manufacturing and processing competitors.
1] Wine Institute. (2022) US Wine Consumption. Wine Statistics. https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/us-wine-consumption/
Helping a Food Manufacturer Grow Production Volume With Automation
Our engineers used Rockwell Automation technology to program process automation controllers, perform troubleshooting and upgrade support for a manufacturing expansion.
The Project: Accommodate and Integrate Processes for a Warehouse Expansion
E Tech Group completed a fast-track project for a 110,000-square-foot addition to an existing food processing facility for the company, a hummus and dip producer. The expansion included warehouse space, additional and renovated employee amenities and offices, as well as the installation of new processing, packaging and utility generation equipment.
E Tech Group was brought under contract to provide the programming of the Process Automation Controllers (PACs), HMI, Historian, and Recipe Management systems. The engineering team provided a solution consistent with the existing facility automation, which our engineers previously implemented, while improving I/O communications with the use of Ethernet/IP and valves with an AS-Interface.
The Solution: A Recipe for Scalable, Automated Success
Phase 2 of the project included automation and monitoring of the utilities, clean-in-place (CIP), cooking, ingredient preparation, garnish, mixing, and filling systems. This was a fast-track project, with the order being placed in December for on-site commissioning of the first systems to start in April the following year. All of the systems were designed, developed, and commissioned on time.
How we expanded production abilities with a scalable automation solution:
- The system was implemented using a redundant Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk View SE distributed HMI with six servers and fifteen clients.
- ACP ThinManager was used to provide the thin client solution.
- Seven Rockwell Automation ControlLogix PACs were used for providing monitoring and control of the equipment.
- The combined systems included approximately 1,500 I/O points with 136 drives.
Food and beverage automation, much like pharmaceutical automation, requires control systems that improve production speed and reduce failures and downtime. E Tech Group has continued to work closely with the client on many additional projects to give the company flexibility in its control system for batching of products.
Identified Challenges: Flexibility, Fine-Tuning and Further Integration
After Phase 2 was complete, E Tech Group automation engineers continued to work heavily with the client on general support requests or running certain equipment. If the client wanted to fine tune the process system with tasks such as changing the sequence, relocating equipment, or adding some functionality, they would typically call in, and we would quickly complete those tasks.
In the most recently-completed project, E Tech Group incorporated a new modified mixing system (MMS). A new pasteurization line was also added, which the client previously didn’t have on site. This MMS is connected to a pasteurization line which allows for some modifications and improvements to their production that couldn’t be done before.
The product coming out of the mixer is then heated to high temperatures for a certain amount of hold time and then it is rapidly cooled back down right before it goes into the fillers that package the hummus into a cup. This is done to eliminate pathogens and increase the shelf life of the product. This specifically helps with their organic products due to the restrictions around preservatives and additives for organic products by still allowing for a healthy shelf life.
The client is working to add flexibility into their production equipment, with the goal of eventually having this line dedicated to organic products. A current project we are working with the client on is to replace a manually-involved process for adding organic tahini to the mixing system. Currently it involves a manually-wheeled-around tote with non-permanent connections. It is being replaced with a dedicated tank, removing the need for manual actions with automation technology that also provides the ingredient at a larger scale.
The Results: Ongoing Growth Requires further Automation and Integration
In terms of technology on the more recent projects, they’re building off of most of the same hardware and software stacks that they were using in the previous effort.
The team at E Tech Group has worked with vendor prepackaged systems to ensure that they communicate with the existing control system and operate properly after installation. The vendor prepackaged systems will be expecting input from our systems, whether it is ingredients, water, chickpea paste, etc., then it will likely be sent to one of our pieces of equipment.
To have better data to maintain the highest quality control, the client has implemented FactoryTalk Historian and VantagePoint, allowing the company to monitor and report on process conditions such as pressure, temperature, status of hardware such as valves, and also process specific step and phase data. Having this information available allows the client to more easily troubleshoot situations when they arise as well as having a deeper insight as to what areas may be best to next upgrade or make modifications to further improve efficiency.
E Tech Group is proud to have been a part of helping the client grow production volume and product diversity while allowing the manufacturing line to retain flexibility. The food and beverage industry requires automated processes that ensure precision, consistency and scalability. E Tech Group’s breadth of experience in this industry keeps us poised to help industrial food producers stay competitive by increasing production capacity and quality with integrated control systems that provide end-to-end coverage for your processes.