SAB’s recipe management processes are the key to product consistency and customer satisfaction. When it came to designing a new system for the Newlands brewery, therefore, technology constraints were thrown out the window in favour of satisfying the plant’s ideal requirements.
For its brewhouse upgrade project, the brewing giant needed a design for a recipe management system to meet the following needs:
* Replace seven existing PLCs with new Siemens S7 PLCs.
* Create and modify trial recipes.
* Dynamically adjust brew volumes due to under or over malt batching.
* Store production data in the Wonderware Production Events Module (PEM).
* Display historical information and publish web reports for clients.
* Implement an automatic recipe loader.
* Improve alarm handling through intelligent alarming objects.
* Improve trending per brew per vessel.
System description
The project needs were met through the use of intelligent ArchestrA objects for the implementation of recipe management systems, intelligent alarming, historical information and other applications.
"We started the design with the raw material intake area," says Abraham Vorster, project engineer at system integrator Quad Automation.
"As material is off-loaded from train trucks into the silos according to the ArchestrA recipe object the relevant information is captured by a PLC and stored in an ArchestrA history object (see Figure 1). This object stores intake history for 150 train truck offloads (malt type, date, actual mass, etc.) as well as the information for up to 100 reclaims. The recipe loader object combines the information from the history and recipe objects before sending it to a third party batch server that runs the process via the PLC. The sequence of subsequent events is once more stored in the ArchestrA history object."
Reclaim recipes
Brewmasters create master recipes, which include master brands and sub-brands (instances of the master brands). Changes to master brand recipes are automatically propagated to the sub-brands. The recipe object can hold up to 100 recipes. The reclaim recipes alone total about 4500 values. With the malt reclaim recipes, provision is made for a recovery calculation in case of a breakdown or aborted batch. The calculation includes what needs to be done to complete the batch.
Trial recipes
Trial recipes are created by making a copy of a sub-brand recipe but with altered parameters (eg trial malt types) according to the brew master's directions. The brewmaster can schedule the trial recipes to be run automatically when convenient.
Mills recipes
After logging in, the brew master checks the amount of reclaimed material, selects the required brew number, changes selected parameters, has the system recalculate the amount of raw materials needed and starts the execution of the mill recipe. The auto recipe loader object will create the Mash Tun recipe automatically.
Mash tun recipes
The mash tun recipe is created like the others. The function exists for the operator to manually create a recipe should the auto recipe loader object fail or if a batch needs to be recreated.
History information
The history object holds all the history for vessel-to-vessel transfer. "This object stores history for all the brews throughout the brew house," says Vorster. "The auto recipe loader object uses transferred information from the previous vessel. For example, the recipe loader for the lauter tun will check to see what the mash tun has done so that it can calculate appropriate operational parameters."
Intelligent alarming
Previously, operators had to scan through a multitude of alarms to pinpoint a particular problem. "We developed an alarm object that flashes either yellow for a non-critical alarm that will not stop production (see Figure 2) or red for a critical alarm that will stop production," says Vorster. "As an operator clicks on a displayed alarm per main section of the plant (1), another display appears (2) detailing the specific alarms for that section. Clicking on one of these causes the window where the alarm occurred to be displayed (3). In this way, three steps take the operator directly to the cause of the problem rather than having to scroll through a lengthy and sometimes confusing list of alarms and warnings."
Web reporting
"Our scope was to make sure that production data was logged into a database and we decided to use PEM objects which would make engineering easier," adds Vorster. "The PEM database, which is ISA-95 compliant, stores specified information into its database based on triggers. Whether used for tracking consumption, materials, consumables or production information such as the temperature of the mash tun at a certain point, the information is then readily available for extraction and manipulation."
Trending
Part of the specification for the project was to retain the functionality that existed in the old system. Operators can select a start and end date for a specified brew and the updated trending information for that period is sent to ActiveFactory for review.
Realised benefits
* Ease of recipe management - brewing can adjust any recipes, and create and modify trial recipes while the various processes are aware of each other's performance and productivity through the Recipe Loader objects.
* Improved reporting - facilitated through storing data in an ISA-95 compliant database for easy retrieval and collation.
* Greatly improved historical review - operators now have instant access to such key information as intake quantities, reclaimed quantities and mash tun performance.
* Accessible trending analysis - operators can easily specify a 'sliding time portal' through which they can view key performance trends for the various processes.
Improved alarm handling - operators can drill down to the cause of the problem in three quick steps rather than scrolling through reams of alarms and warnings.
"Perhaps the greatest benefit is that the system satisfied all the user requirements that were based solely on their needs and nothing else. Which just goes to show that today's software technology is equal to the task of delivering whatever results is demanded of it," concludes Vorster.
For more information contact Justin Tweedie, Wonderware Southern Africa, 0861 WONDER, [email protected], www.wonderware.co.za
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version