Increased focus on tracebility making life complex for food firms
Cost and energy efficiency, safety, security, productivity, traceability, compliance, consistency, reliability, flexibility and upgradability: the demands on process control systems make Van Halen's legendary tour riders pale in comparison.
All are expected to seamlessly link into one common platform with a uniform look and feel, and maintain competitiveness for plants facing pressure from tight margins, energy reduction targets and a heightened focus on traceability.
“Automation is quite mature in food and beverage,” says Paul Alcock, technical consultant at SolutionsPT, citing the key to effective process control as having the right systems in place “to be competitive, flexible and get the highest yield out of equipment."
A global supplier of industrial IT solutions including software, hardware and allied services, SolutionsPT's clients in the food and drinks sector use its Wonderware software to manage preparation, making/batching and packaging operations, including the Wonderware System Platform to tie it all together.
Among solutions provided are human–machine interfaces and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA); manufacturing execution systems; as well as production management, energy monitoring, and top-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
SolutionsPT’ s InBatch batch process software was updated this year and its InTouch SCADA system was recently boosted with an extension allowing access to plant data from any location using any web browsing device.
Siemens’ process control covers all elements of manufacture, via distributed control systems (DCS), programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and SCADA packages supplied to many UK blue chip manufacturers, particularly dairy and brewing.
“Having a common platform, a lot of the peripheral devices can all be integrated into one system,” says Stephen Hughes, channel manager at Siemens Industry.
'Longer-term support' (Return to top)
Siemens’ customers are increasingly seeking lifecycle services; partly in response to a deskilling across UK industry. “Customers are seeking longer-term support, covered by lifecycle and full maintenance contracts for assets," says Simon Keogh, business manager for factory automation at Siemens.
Siemens' automated software solutions roll in with product lifecycle management (PLM) packages, which extend to 3D modelling of proposed production lines to establish fit within a plant's footprint and identify any potential bottlenecks or issues. PLM can be used to reduce downtime and get new products to market quicker, including the slight variations on successful lines popular in food and drink.
Safety is another focus for Siemens, replacing old hardwired systems with networked safety components such as Profinet, and wireless options increasingly popular.
For Schneider Electric, automation and energy management component specialist, process control solutions should be scalable to cope with rising demand, changeable costs and evolving consumer trends, according to Mark Staples, UK food and beverage segment manager.
“Every manufacturer will have a mix of new and existing legacy products in its processing line,” says Staples. “Not all of these will need to be replaced the – key is digitally driving communication between them so plant operators can take an informed view of what needs updating and replacing and when, based on faults, potential wastage and energy use.”
Schneider Electric's StruxureWare software addresses firms’ energy and production management needs, and can be integrated with third-party and legacy products.
Global automation technology supplier Festo, meanwhile, extended its CPX automation platform in May, offering greater integration and flexibility and, ultimately, cost savings.
Ideal for cabinet applications such as those found in food and drink industries, the extension enables engineers to split CPX valve terminals into two parts, add more modules, and potentially save 30% of the costs associated with current solutions, says Festo. Diagnostics and modularity are carried over into the second row without any need for a second communications node or wider specialist cabinets.
Updating control systems (Return to top)
Omron’s new Sysmac automation platform NJ – an open architecture controller – is a step beyond the more restrictive logical control of PLCs, claims Karl Walker, the firm’s automation product marketing manager. Omron largely works with machine builders rather than end users, supplying industrial automation and electronic components.
“The whole idea of Sysmac is to integrate everything into a single environment,” he says. “Logic, motion, vision, robotics, safety and data basing are all seamlessly linked in.”
Sysmac makes it much easier to troubleshoot and simulate production lines whereas, with many PLCs, operators can end up “trying to glue all the components together into a single system, and that can be troublesome”, he says. “The NJ controller is a plug-and-play concept integrating every aspect; the most significant one for us is safety.
You couldn't have integrated safety within PLC, you had to try and get them to talk to each other.” A further advantage of the open architecture associated with Sysmac is new features can be added without changing the hardware, says Walker, in contrast to the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) systems associated with PLCs, which he says have evolved little in 10–15 years.
The Sysmac platform was launched by Omron 18 months ago but new safety, robotics and database features have recently been added. “It can control up to eight delta robots in, for example, a pick-and-place system,” says Walker.
EtherCAT is the system’s backbone, with Ethernet/internet protocol connecting devices. “You can buy a piece of kit and click it in,” he says.
Rockwell Automation, another global firm in industrial automation and information, published three white papers in June for manufacturers looking to move on from outdated DCSs.
“Many firms may not realise that the same DCS installed years ago to improve productivity and cut costs, is negatively affecting productivity and the bottom line today,” says Mike Vernak, DCS marketing manager at Rockwell Automation.
Major focus of process control (Return to top)
Energy efficiency, driven by government and cost pressures, continues to be a major focus of process control in food and drink manufacturing.
“There hasn't been huge investment in automation,” says Keogh, but instead a drive towards cost and energy efficiency. Siemens has been working with clients in the food and drinks sector to improve production efficiency on equipment, and offers finance packages around its consultations including energy monitoring which can be paid in staged instalments with a final top-up fee based on savings achieved.
And citing many manufacturers as data rich but information poor, Staples says Schneider Electric can provide the digital technology to pull and organise relevant data for translation “into actionable insight to make better decisions and improve efficiencies”.
That might include identifying one production line as using more energy than necessary at the wrong times of day.
This year’s EU-wide horsemeat-in-beef contamination scandal has meant “UK manufacturers are also faced with growing pressure from both supermarkets and consumers alike – who are demanding more information about where their food comes from and how it is produced”, says Staples.
For SolutionsPT, effective process control should allow manufacturers to extract detailed product information at any time and its Wonderware Historian can store 500,000 different process values without a limit on functions. “Information has to tie up, have traceability for ‘x’ number of years,” says Alcock.
Cyber security (Return to top)
And following on from traceability is security, with the prospect of any tampering and the subsequent recall of any products reaching market representing a serious threat to brands.
Demand for cyber security is increasing, says Keogh, and Siemens offers consulting services to test plant security. But cyber security is a growing issue that most of the leading process control suppliers are being forced to address.
Strong partnerships can help process control suppliers incorporate complex demands into simple, streamlined systems.
“One thing that does differentiate the food and beverage sector, it's very partner orientated," says Hughes. “We have solution partners, third- party engineering firms in partnership with us.”
Such partners include Norgren, a provider of pneumatic and fluid control products and solutions, supplied to secondary or third-tier systems in food and drink manufacturing among other industries.
It works with clients to provide parts in various materials for various applications such as valves for potentially explosive whisky production environments or pneumatic actuators, which can be washed down in abattoirs.
“Our valving would be electrically tied up with the PLC running the programme,” says Dave Whelan, global sector head of food and beverage at Norgren.
Norgren has, in partnership with its customers, developed integrated valve and actuator control (IVAC) to combine valve, flow controls, cushioning and sensors in one package. As well as cutting energy and installation costs, IVAC makes cleaning and maintenance quicker and simpler and enables firms to take a valve out of service without interrupting production.
