Food Processing - April 2008 - (Page 39)

AUTOMATION process world where distributed control systems (DCSs) are the norm, he says, “In the mid-1980s, I put in Serial No. 1 of the Rosemount [now Emerson Process Management] RS3 [DCS]. It gave us a full 40-megabytes of hard drive to work with. And 53% Production sections 55% it only cost $2 million!” 51% Today, a single programmable logic controller (PLC) “can Packaging sections 53% do everything we were doing back then,” says Cole, director 24% Entire production line of information systems and plant automated systems and stan21% dards for Smithﬁeld Foods (www.smithﬁeldfoods.com), the 18% Logistics/warehousing 13% nation’s largest pork processor, based in Smithﬁeld, Va. And 12% Waste operations the cost of even a high-end PLC is about $500. More impres7% sive: PLCs at Smithﬁeld today handle motion, motor and pro11% Maintenance, 6% repair, ops cess loop controls that a decade ago required multiple vendors, 5% tools, parts and training that far exceeded the hardware cost. Entire plant 7% This year Unlike Smithﬁeld, whose real-time controls and higher4% Other 2% Last year level plant systems plug into the enterprise pipeline, most food 18% plant operators lag far behind. None 17% The FOOD PROCESSING 2008 Manufacturing Trends Survey 0 20 40 60 found that while most plants have at least some production SOURCE: FOOD PROCESSING MANUFACTURING TRENDS SURVEY and packaging automation, little more than one-ﬁ fth have fully Federal requirements mandate that companies track prod- automated production lines. And those who have automated ucts one step forward and back in the supply chain, and trace their entire plants registered in the single digits. “For most of our customers in food and beverage, our systhe cause of an incident within 24 hours. Business demands are more stringent as companies including Wal-Mart conduct tem platform becomes the starting point for improvements mock-recall audits of suppliers and demand that causes be in other areas,” says Claus Abildgren, program manager for Invensys Wonderware’s production and performance managetraced any number of steps across the supply chain. Salmonella in peanut butter, E. coli in spinach, even an ani- ment software solutions (www.wonderware.com), Lake Forest, mal handling video scandal on YouTube can cost tens to hun- Calif. “Most plants start small and evolve incrementally.” A key enabler of today’s automation systems is standarddreds of millions of dollars in short-term sales losses, product replenishment costs and legal and investigative costs. The long- ization. Beyond purely technical standards (e.g., Microsoft, Ethernet), two ongoing efforts are beginning to have an imterm consequences can be far worse. As the Chinese melamine scare of last year proved, keeping pact on the unique batch processes of the food and beverage only your house in order is not enough. “As the food processing industry. ISA-88 and ISA-95 consist of common terms and industry has become dependent on extended supply chains with deﬁ nitions for manufacturing functions; common process multiple vendors, risk and quality management has become criti- models that map real-world plant processes and data ﬂows; cal. But most organizations still implement their food safety and and programming conventions shared by automation profesquality management system in a paper-based approach,” says sionals. As such, they serve both as templates for training as Nikki Willett, vice president of marketing and regulatory prod- well as technology development. Some of their key features: • ISA-88 and allied efforts (such as ucts for Pilgrim Software Inc. (www.pilPHOTO: CDC SOFT WARE Make2Pack for packaging) address grimsoftware.com), Tampa, Fla. Pilgrim most production environments provides an enterprise compliance and found in food plants, including quality management software platform. automated product changeovers. “Companies need to take a look This standard has paved the way for into the same principles of industrial “higher throughput and yield and automation and apply it to best pracreductions in product variability,” tices in quality and safety management says Dennis Brandl of BR&L Conautomation and think of the system sulting, Cary, N.C., and chairman of as a whole,” she continues. The ideal the standard’s work group. is “a global program, trained employThis standard ﬁrst affected ﬁrst-tier ees, well-documented SOPs and utilizcontrol software such as human-maing technology properly to put global chine interface (HMI) and supervisopractices and procedures in place.” ry control and data acquisition (SCADA) software and grew with batch Evolving price/performance At Breyers Yogurt, a touchscreen operator station displays and manufacturing execution systems Mike Cole, a veteran engineer and in- buttons for equipment, supplies and performance status (MESs) that lie between control and formation technology pro, could never (top), a set of quality dashboard buttons (left) and an OEE front-ofﬁce enterprise resource planhave guessed how far technology would rate that measures target ﬁrst-run quality throughput. Agning (ERP) systems. advance. Coming from the continuous- gregated data drive KPIs in the plant and the front ofﬁce. WHAT PORTION OF YOUR PLANT HAS BEEN AUTOMATED? WWW.FOODPROCESSING.COM APRIL 2008 FOOD PROCESSING • 39 http://www.smithfieldfoods.com http://www.wonderware.com http://www.grimsoftware.com http://www.grimsoftware.com http://WWW.FOODPROCESSING.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Food Processing - April 2008

Food Processing - April 2008 Contents Editor's Plate NewsBites The Trends Rollout Food Biz Kids Consumer Taste Test - Indulgent, Superpremium Chocolate...at 3 Calories a Pop Cover Story - Annual Capital Spending Report - To Build or Not to Build? Ingredients - Trendy Fruits, Nuts and Vegetables Plant Operations - iPlant: Assessing the State of Automation Plant Operations - Your Sanitation Can Be Greener Packaging - For Which Oven? MRO Q&A New Supplier Products Toops Scoops

Food Processing - April 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.