Latin automation
SCADA and MES solution for a multinational in food and beverage
In cooperation with a customer specialized in internal logistics, we have created a SADA and a MES solution for a multinational in soft drinks, patato chips and cookies. This optimized the internal logistics of four factories in Latin America. It contains case conveying systems, case buffer decks, palletizers, pallet converyors, pallet labellers and automatic truckloading.
These projects started in 2017 and we are still partners with this machine supplier for service and support for extensions to the systems.
A few details about
The Project
The projects consists of factories that produce patato chips and cookies, these products are backed in ovens and packed in cartons by packing machines. These machines drop the boxes on a case transport system, which moves the boxes to case buffer lanes, where a complete pallet loading is collected on one case buffer lane.
When a pallet load is ready, the boxes are tranported to palletizing machines, these machines creates the pallet. After creation, the pallet is transported to a wrapping lane where the pallet is wrapped and labelled. When the pallet is correctly wrapped and labelled the pallet is moved to an automatic truckloading area or to a manual outfeed for manual trailer loading or storage in a local warehouse.
Some special
Specifications
Production order, transport order and product information is uploaded by SAP to the MES system. Through the SCADA system operators can choose which production order to produce. This information is used to collect the correct product in the case buffer lanes.
After creating a pallet, the pallezier notifies the MES system that the pallet is produced for a production order. The pallet is labelled with the correct production order and product information. The transport order determines the end destination of the pallet, a local warehouse (pallets are removed by a forklift from the system) or a remote warehouse (pallets are moved to an automatic truckloading dock).
How we solved it
Our approach
The four factories produce in a simular way: the product is backed and packed, transported to a case collection area and palletized. The pallet is wrapped, labelled, transported to pallet collection area and moved to a warehouse.
For that reason we made a standard software solution for the four factories and implemented it with some differences in details per factory, mainly the routing of the pallet over the pallet conveying system. The communication between PLC’s, palletizers and MES was standardized, in this way the commisioning time for the first factory was quite long, but the other factories could be commisioned in a much shorter time
We created a highly reliable framework in C# for the MES solution in combination with a SQL Server relational database. The factories are producing 24/7, which means that the servers are also running day and night without stopping or restarting of the back-end. Because of customer requirements the SCADA system (front-end) was build on an Aveva InTouch HMI in combination with ActiveX components created in Visual Basic.
