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A California winery faced challenges due to outdated controls, which caused downtime, expensive hardware replacement, and lack of maintenance knowledge. They hired E Tech Group to create a PLC and SCADA upgrade solution.
Outdated controls can pose many operational challenges. Companies that operate with outdated controls often experience frequent downtime, expensive or obsolete hardware replacement parts, or few personnel with the knowledge to perform maintenance on legacy systems. These challenges were faced by a long-running California winery that needed to modernize the controls for their red fermentation process. The winery needed to address how a control system upgrade would impact their operations and contracted E Tech Group to create a PLC and SCADA upgrade solution.
The first step was to create a well-documented project plan. E Tech Group analyzed the existing system design and detailed existing hardware components, software configurations and network connections. This step was crucial to have an accurate picture of their current control environment to mitigate production impacts during the implementation phase.
The project team upgraded hardware and reconfigured the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA automation software for seamless post-upgrade operations. The original red fermentation process was conformed with three areas: pump over area, continuous press area, and decanters area.
Previously, each area had their own PLC. The upgraded control system connected an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix PLC as the main controller, and remote IO was added to control the three areas into one. The system was programmed with ladder logic to the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA software, and seven new PanelView Plus HMIs were also programmed with FactoryTalk View ME as the client’s choice of visualization software.
The project team leveraged their PLC programming, Ignition SCADA software, and controls engineering expertise to resolve software compatibility issues, bugs in the programming code, and electrical connection challenges. E Tech Group’s automation team supported the project to resolve these challenges and performed extensive testing. With the PLC and SCADA upgrade complete, the client was able to improve the uptime of its red fermentation process and eliminate the key challenges of legacy system maintenance.
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A leading California winery was facing manual sampling inefficiencies. E Tech Group implemented an IFM Integration project, achieving fully-automated in-tank brix monitoring with our IO link platform expertise.
A California winery faced operational inefficiencies with manual wine sampling and turned to E Tech Group for an IFM integration project. The goal was a seamless transition to fully automated brix monitoring. Our proposed solution involved IO Link Masters for Modbus TCP data retrieval and two durable NEMA 4x stainless steel enclosures. The client chose to contract E Tech Group as their integration partner because of our proven expertise in IO Link Platform, and our proven track record of providing reliable process automation solutions.
The project team partnered with IFM and a research university to verify the precision of a new pressure transmitter for accurate brix measurements. Our team worked with the winery’s maintenance team to secure space for control panels, and collaborated with Tanknet for the system integration. An IO Link Master was set up for communication through Modbus, leading to successful implementation of the automated brix monitoring system.
We successfully acquired brix measurements within the tanks and integrated Modbus IO Link Masters into the control system, meeting the client’s goals for automated brix monitoring. Our automation team’s expertise and collaboration resulted in a positive outcome, moving this leading winery forward into their digital transformation.
Outdated controls can pose many operational challenges. Companies that operate with outdated controls often experience frequent downtime, expensive or obsolete hardware replacement parts, or few personnel with knowledge to perform maintenance on legacy systems. These challenges were faced by a long-running California winery who needed to modernize the controls for their red fermentation process. The winery needed to address how a system upgrade would impact their operations and engaged E Tech Group to create a PLC and SCADA upgrade solution.
Solution
The first step was to create a well-documented project plan. E Tech Group analyzed the existing system design and detailed existing hardware components, software configurations, and network connections. This step was crucial to have an accurate picture of their current control environment to mitigate production impacts during the implementation phase.
The project team upgraded hardware and reconfigured the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA software for seamless post-upgrade operations. The original red fermentation process was conformed with three areas: pump over area, continuous press area, and decanters area. Previously, each area had their own PLC but the upgraded system connected an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix PLC as the main controller and remote IO was added to control the three areas into one. The system was programmed with ladder logic to the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA software, and seven new PanelView Plus HMIs were also programmed with FactoryTalk View ME as the customer’s choice visualization software.
The project team leveraged their PLC programming, Ignition SCADA software, and controls engineering expertise to resolve software compatibility issues, bugs in the programming code, and electrical connection challenges. The team supported the project to resolve these challenges and performed extensive testing. With the PLC and SCADA upgrade complete, the customer was able to improve the uptime of its red fermentation process and eliminated the key challenges of legacy system maintenance.
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