A move to new premises in Ekurhuleni and the constant drive for better consumer pricing in the growing South African soft sweets market, led Kraft Foods to commission Industrial Information Technologies (I2T) to carry out an evaluation of the present machinery and processes used in its marshmallow production line and to advise on solutions which would reduce costs through improved process stability and reduced scrap levels. Using an Adroit scada system, the line achieved a significant improvement in output with scrap eliminated.
Overview
Kobus Sutherland, MD of I2T relates: "We found ourselves in a sticky situation, the marshmallow production line was producing an unacceptable level of waste product which was of great concern to Kraft. It was causing the company to run additional shifts at high cost to deliver the required output. To us this was indicative of a serious control problem and we decided to replace the legacy system with an Adroit scada."
Recipe screen
I2T started the project by identifying various temperatures, process times, pressures and pump speeds as the main control points in the process. They were convinced that most of the waste-related production loses could be eliminated if these critical processes were controlled within certain limits.
The standard Adroit scada Version 5.0 with Recipe Manager was used on a standalone Windows XP-based system. The 800 tags (using 150 x 16 Adroit tag licences) are connected to a single PLC that is in turn connected to the server via RS232. The scada system is located next to the machine and uses standard Adroit graphics and on screen alarms with data being stored for 30 days. No special scripting was needed for the installation, but risk of redundancy was reduced through the use of Adroit Remote Client. I2T's project engineer, Willie Grimbeek says that the Adroit system is soon to be integrated into the plant monitoring system.
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