Food Processing - April 2008 - (Page 40)

AUTOMATION • ISA-95 is a control-to-enterprise standard built upon ISA-88, according to Brandl, that maps workflows between production, packaging, quality and maintenance. It broadens the effectiveness of MES-level models with extensions from production to functions throughout operations and up to the ERP level, where SAP has been a leading proponent. Food and beverage companies supporting these standards range from multinational giants Nestle and Mars to Tillamook County Creamery Assn. and Danish dairy Arla Foods. These and other companies are finding significant savings in more rapid integration of their SAP systems with “any of the major automation companies” via a standard interface, says Keith Unger of Stone Technologies, Chesterfield, Mo., and chairman of ISA-95’s standards committee. Smithfield’s Cole refined his systems strategy thanks to Rockwell’s conformance to such standards – and due to the opportunity afforded by his own company’s greenfield plant. The strategy now is being implemented gradually across all plants. Not only did he integrate plant applications with the ERP system, web services make this information available to remote managers monitoring plant-by-plant performance levels. Sales personnel can track orders to levels of partial completion. Executing a command performance Most companies with revenues above $250 million are using MES systems at some level. “But most of them still lack the integration of production floor management with the business system, warehouse, logistics and other applications,” says ARC’s Blanchard. “And they lack the bidirectional exchange of information processors need to monitor and improve the efficiency and overall performance of their manufacturing, packaging and supply chain operations.” MES can be seen as having has two tiers of benefits: production management and performance management. Standard features typically include data collection and event-driven alerts for operator intervention such as clean-in-place (CIP), hazards analysis and critical control points (HACCP) programs or material replenishment. Systems rise to the level of performance management when Smithfield Foods has standardized on Rockwell Automation hardware and software, from real-time PLC controls (shown) to performance-managing execution systems that communicate with the front office. NOTE TO MANAGEMENT “Companies lose more money on the plant floor than in their corporate headquarters,” says Peter Martin, vice president of performance measurement and management for Invensys Plc (www. invensys.com). Martin, who wrote the book on performance ECONOMIC BENEFIT Not Measured $ PRICE ROA ASSET COST Sometimes Measured TIME management (literally) more than a decade ago, has found this to be the case again and again. In one two-month evaluation of a seven-plant process operation, “We found $300 million worth of value within the plant that we could recover with process automation. How many ERP systems can do that?” He says most companies who put in ERP systems “are still wondering if they got any incremental value” from them. Automation, like any capital investment, requires an understanding of the lifecycle cost of the asset. From initially high costs due to up-front engineering, installation and start-up, expenses level off for a period of time before increasing again with maintenance and obsolescence. But plantwide integration and enterprise connectivity give new visibility to profit and loss centers buried within the enterprise. they include modules for or integrate with functions outside production and incorporate deeper analytical functions such as optimal equipment effectiveness (OEE). The practice of OEE is accompanied by aggregated data presented as key performance indicators (KPIs), such as a single-value index or percentage of a production line’s performance against an ideal goal. It’s one of many uses for KPIs that can be presented in dashboard-style values, dials or graphic bars. Each KPI, wherever it is displayed, should be role-specific to the operator, supervisor or manager using it. This is a major, early challenge in configuring even off-the-shelf packages, according to Walt Staehle, an ex-Kraft Foods manufacturing executive who installed MES, laboratory and other systems across 50-plus Kraft plants during this 20-plus years there. Earlier this decade, Kraft recouped $1.6 million by reducing variability in raw materials-to-finished goods conversion and improving asset utilization by using a simplified (uptimeonly) version of OEE as part of a collaborative, real-time performance management strategy, says Staehle, now technical industry manager for Siemens Energy & Automation (www. sea.siemens.com), Alpharetta, Ga. “Key performance indicators are what we measure and run our businesses by. It’s how we run our shop floors. It’s how we run our daily lives,” says Smithfield’s Cole. Both Cole and Davis have injected some fun and games into the hard work of optimizing plant efficiency. At SmithWWW.FOODPROCESSING.COM 40 • FOOD PROCESSING APRIl 2008 http://www.invensys.com http://www.invensys.com http://www.sea.siemens.com http://www.sea.siemens.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.