Improved plant performance and quality through traceability and plant intelligence
APV Enquiry 302
In today's food and beverage industry dominated by reduced profit per unit, there is a growing need to optimise the efficiency and productivity of installed equipment. Financial payback and return on investment are no longer measured in years, but months. In anticipation, APV has been focusing on solutions and services that provide a solid foundation for improved performance and efficiency. In addition to being a fiercely competitive environment, customers face other challenges, such as a growing number of regulatory issues, including food safety and traceability, and bio-terrorism.
Meanwhile, major supermarket chains are becoming more dominant, forcing producers to implement traceability. This is combined with a critical need to safeguard brand integrity, to avoid a product becoming a commodity. Other industry drivers include the need to manufacture at the lowest cost possible, and with the shortest production and change-over times. These challenges have been posing problems, as many existing control systems were not designed to respond to these requirements at the time of installation. A first step has been to connect individual automation systems, either wholly or partially, to a plant wide network.
The first pre-requisite to improving efficiency and productivity is to establish the current plant status so that future improvements can be measured. It can often be possible to identify solutions that will result in significant benefits, either in terms of throughput or flexibility. However, unless they can be measured accurately, it can prove difficult to justify the capital investment and agree a likely payback.
Although manufacturing sites vary a great deal, there are nonetheless quite a number of similarities. Most sites have a mixture of control systems - some with local operator interfaces and others with centralised control room systems. These systems are likely to have been supplied by different equipment suppliers, each with their own standard in programming and data allocation. In cases such as these, combining data and knowledge can generate frustration, and cause the loss of valuable information. One approach has been to ensure that the structure from the individual systems is reflected in a common data repository and method of access. Whilst this has created some quick wins, extending the solution and applying more advanced functions has proved a challenge, due to a lack of the tools required to create a consistent infrastructure.
The industry is now seeing great improvements. With the release of the ArchestrA® technology from Invensys, what had previously appeared impossible, suddenly became a reality - not only technically, but also from a financial standpoint. The solution is known as "APV Production Server", which consists of four vital components:
1. APV's in-depth process know-how
2. Wonderware's Industrial Application Server
3. Wonderware's InSQL Server
4. Microsoft's MS SQL Server
APVīs process know-how forms a layer between the ArchestrA® environment and the individual control systems to secure the functionality and implementation of the APV Production Server. It also provides valuable tools and solutions to add to the APV Production Server when required. For new process facilities or a systems upgrade, it delivers predefined methodologies and solutions to help minimise the implementation period. It also provides the latest technology, pre-engineered and tested solutions.
When the process know-how of APV is combined with the infrastructure of the Industrial Application Server, data and information become visible across the entire site. There is no need to be a specialist in the field of data manipulation or to know how to access the data from the individual control systems. On top of the infrastruture, the InSQL Server collects all the data from the control systems, and stores it in a global repository. Integration between the individual components of the APV Production Server is handled automatically, so that every action can be directed from the "cockpit" of the APV Production Server. With data readily available, the advantages of applying advanced control features with a rapid payback are easily identified due to the object structure. These advantages include, for example, traceability, recipe handling and quality management. Another benefit of the APV Production Server is the way that data is structured. All information is handled as objects, and organised in a true S88 model. This approach is not subject to the limitations found in typical batch applications when implemented in continuous process areas.
By investing a modest amount of capital, customers can start collecting and organising events from the production environment for dissemination into reliable, accurate information. Information from the APV Production Server is highly suited to activities like OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency), pin-pointing the impact that even the smallest disruption can cause, and highlighting how the equipment is performing. It is also possible to apply online SPC (Statistical Process Control) to the production environment, which helps to predict what is likely to happen, before it affects the production schedule or product quality.
The solution is currently being installed at a number of sites, and the reaction from the market is overwhelming. Customers ranging from multinationals to local players are reporting significant benefits in terms of accuracy and efficiency. The system is proving successful on all types of sites, not only in terms of improving the performance of the control system, but also from a process and business oriented perspective. It has proved instrumental in identifying actual conditions and bottlenecks, and proving whether remedial actions have been successful or not.
The APV Production Server provides the structure and systems to help staff at all levels and functions within the production site to make the right decisions at the right time to improve plant efficiency.
