Challenge
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”. This quote by Benjamin Franklin emphasizes the importance of site surveys for industrial environments. With time, money, and resources on the line, site surveys act as a crucial first step to plan for maintenance, spare parts, upgrades, and mitigate the risk of unplanned downtime. This critical information was needed by a leading American food distributor to better understand the health of their plant’s automation infrastructure. E Tech Group was engaged to thoroughly assess their automation hardware and operational technology (OT) networks and provide a comprehensive site assessment report. This report would clearly identify risks and opportunities as well as crucial steps to upgrade and strengthen their automation infrastructure.
Solution
The customer’s plant had three buildings which included over 500 control panels. E Tech Group analyzed numerous factors and data points to determine areas of risk and opportunity across their plant. This included the lifecycle of parts that are currently being used on the production floor as well as the equipment’s life cycle positioning ranging from active to end of life. E Tech Group’s certified professionals also evaluated existing processor types and quantities across the plant and documented the customer’s OT network infrastructure.
The data collected from the site assessment was then organized and analyzed to serve as a roadmap for facility improvements. E Tech Group formulated a comprehensive, well-structured report for the customer’s management, engineering, and maintenance teams which outlined upgrade recommendations and a clear timeline to implement these upgrades based on the priority level.
Results
E Tech Group worked closely with a plant electrician to complete an on-site assessment of all control panels and OT networks in less than eight weeks. The data from the site assessment was used to provide a comprehensive report outlining automation infrastructure by area, OT network architecture, obsolescence, and recommended paths forward to modernize. The site assessment resulted in a proactive plan to reduce the customer’s likelihood of future controls hardware failures and provided a clear roadmap to strengthen their automation infrastructure.
Challenge
Production health is a synergy between availability, performance, and quality. Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is the gold standard to measure these metrics and can help identify early signs of production issues with modern software solutions. This was the challenge for a leading supplier of almond products who needed to find a better way to monitor the real-time efficiency of their lines as well as record production line problems as they occurred. The almond supplier also wanted to own this data and not rely on outside data hosting resources since these often limit extensive data archives. E Tech Group was engaged to upgrade the almond supplier’s performance monitoring system given their experience with the platform, OEE, and database structures.
Solution
The almond supplier requested E Tech Group convert their existing production system to Ignition, an industrial application platform from Inductive Automation, to standardize their SCADA architecture due to its scalability and intuitive design features. The customer requested the project be expedited within a very tight timeline and E Tech Group was ready to put boots on the ground.
E Tech Group provided connection programing to ensure assets were properly tracked in the Allen-Bradley PLCs using Studio 5000 Logix Designer in addition to the Ignition system using the Perspective module. This supported the customer’s ability to have a personalized visualization system that could monitor, control, and record their industrial applications in real-time across any mobile device.
The E Tech Group team set up a database that could effectively log information in an organized manner and enabled seamless data extraction. This structure was difficult to develop from scratch due the high-level of efficiency desired when querying the data. The E Tech Group team engaged their Ignition specialists to configure and connect the SQL database structure with Ignition’s transaction groups and this was later proved to be highly efficient.
Result
The project was completed in three months and the Ignition Perspective module is currently being tested by the customer. The project deployed seamlessly given E Tech Group’s proactive collaboration with the almond supplier. The Ignition platform enabled the customer to track shift start and end times as well as monitor the shift time efficiency. E Tech Group’s Ignition specialists leveraged their in-depth expertise to support the conversion to the Ignition platform, enabling a strong performance monitoring system that could properly track, store, and visualize data to support the customer’s OEE.
Challenge
Quality control can be a significant challenge in the food and beverage industry. One small error in the batch production of products can compromise quality, consistency, and brand reputation. To be successful, beverage facilities rely on batch production and pasteurization solutions so processes can be repeatable within close tolerances as well as scalable to reach large production volume needs. The setup of these solutions are often complex which cause beverage manufacturers to seek support to avoid costly downtime, inferior batch quality, or poor data acquisition capabilities for regulatory reporting. This was the challenge for a global drink manufacturing leader who needed support setting up a new production line that included batching, pasteurizing, and bottling capabilities with a dedicated Clean-In-Place (CIP) system. E Tech Group was engaged to support the development of a new juice and tea production system at one of the customer’s large production facilities in North America.
Solution
The customer needed a repeatable batching system and a near zero liquid loss pasteurizer to maximize the available uptime of their system. The E Tech Group team knew that understanding the customer’s system performance expectations, including cycle times, volumes, and other company-specific production conditions, would be key to develop the logic needed for optimal system utilization.
The team applied the robust AG5 project methodology approach, collaborating with the customer to develop tools for their batching system based on prior operator challenges. For instance, the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) was developed using Wonderware software and designed to be an informative interface for plant personnel without an overwhelming visualization of data. Reports were also routinely generated to provide the customer details about each product run related to batching and pasteurization.
The E Tech Group team developed logic to manage system sequencing using the ControlLogix Programable Automation Controller. An Actuator Sensor Interface (AS-i) networking solution was applied and integrated with the industrial Ethernet structure, enabling an intelligent control system to include smart valve monitoring. The CIP system was fully automated and tested, which enabled circuits to pass inspection after the first run and did not require repeated cycles to clean the system properly. Furthermore, the pasteurizer process was developed with modular phasing to allow the system to switch seamlessly between machine states based on current operational needs.
Results
The entire project was completed in nine months; three months to develop, three months to commission and test, and three months to monitor. The system has been running for over a decade and, since it’s completion, the global drink manufacturer has frequently requested E Tech Group as their trusted automation partner to support further upgrades and adjustments in addition to other production lines.
Challenge
Olive oil production relies on robust storage systems. Storage systems that have inadequate controls against light, heat, and oxygen exposure can compromise the freshness of olive oil products and result in considerable production loss for olive oil manufacturers. To combat this, olive oil companies commonly use temperature controlled and light-protected stainless steel tanks to safely store the olive oil until it’s ready to be bottled. Any mismatch in storage capacity to olive oil production presents a manufacturing bottleneck and loss of profits. For one of the largest olive oil producers in California, the ability to scale their business relied on a robust storage system to expand their olive oil processing capabilities. Industry partner Barnum Mechanical Inc. teamed up with E Tech Group to support the company’s storage system needs.
Solution
With the desire to expand their olive oil production, the customer needed a new storage tank farm with greater capacity. The project team assessed existing equipment, current system requirements, and collaborated with various stakeholders to best plan the storage tank system, keeping safety, maintenance processes, and future expansion capabilities top-of-mind. The team interfaced Rockwell Automation ControlLogix PLCs with Wonderware software to support a high-performance control platform with intuitive process visualization. An ifm Actuator Sensor Interface (AS-i) networking solution was designed and integrated in the PLC to simplify wiring efforts with various storage system sensors and save significant time during the installation process, notably as an alternative to conventional point-to-point wiring. Additionally, at the time of this project, it was believed that the team created the largest AS-i network in North America given the extensive networking applications needed for the customer’s large industrial environment.
The team also integrated a Clean-In Place (CIP) system in the controls engineering design to better support production uptime, product quality, employee safety, and cost-effective maintenance. The CIP system provided an automated method to clean interior surfaces of the process equipment without having to disassemble the system for future cleanings. The CIP system was integrated with all storage tanks and transfers to each tank from the olive oil extraction process.
Result
The project and process were a complete success. The customer was able to sufficiently store their increased production of olive oil and then some. The project team was thrilled to have the opportunity to support the new storage tank system and optimize their process environment with a CIP system. With the greater storage capacity, the customer was able expand their product into new geographies and gain greater market share.