Real-time integration: Ryvita’s Bakery Systems efficiency rises

Silchester Control Systems completed a large-scale real-time, historical business reporting system for a high-technology bakery, bringing data from sensors, through programmable controllers, into supervisory computers and out across the network as useful knowledge, reducing manual data entry by 90%. That was done with zero downtime and no loss of production, according to the system integrator involved.

By Control Engineering Staff September 6, 2007

Four Marks, U.K .—

Silchester Control Systems

completed a large-scale real-time, historical business reporting system for a high-technology bakery, bringing data from sensors, through programmable controllers, into supervisory computers and out across the network as useful knowledge, reducing manual data entry by 90%. That was done with zero downtime and no loss of production, according to the system integrator involved.

Ryvita

, Poole, part of the ABF Group (Associated British Foods), has been making crispbread since 1925 and exports to over 85 countries. Ryvita total quality management (TQM) and best practice management programs offer manufacturing higher system efficiencies, monitored downtime, product tracking, and dynamic reactivity. After scoping the work and approving a detailed functional design specification, Silchester installed a redundant resilient industrial fiber Ethernet network throughout the factory. This formed a communications backbone for the next stages. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) servers were installed, industrial touch-screen client PCs were connected, and SCADA displays were built as the machine information was connected.

Ryvita production teams found immediate savings, Silchester says, “as previously held beliefs were dispelled, and actual bottleneck problems targeted and rectified. Shift team meetings can now project trends and real-time reports to their teams to show problems and identify best practices.”

Reports are available network-wide (using only Microsoft Internet Explorer) as soon as record entries are completed. Data about slicing and dicing and about shift, product, line, machine, and day are recorded with

Citect

Ampla Analyst and Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Reporting Studio. (Citect is part of

Schneider Electric

.) Custom tabular, Pareto, trend, pie charts and reports are available customized per person in understandable dashboards, linkable to Microsoft Dynamics NAV data. The system hides technology and data transport to the end user, offering real-time information so augment skills and experience needed to make business decisions in a timely manner, Silchester says, which augments continuous business improvements.

Monitoring and process control at Ryvita have improved. As reports open, shift teams and production managers can easily see what is happening to the end product, as minor changes in process are implemented. Downtime becomes instantly visible via Web browser, Silchester says; remote network access ensures minimal time-to-fix culture for engineering teams.

Software used “achieve a modular user experience consistent with Ryvita’s Microsoft Excel legacy reports,” a spreadsheet that exceeded 40 MB with calculations from hundreds of manual entries, taking many hours per week, Silchester says. Now entries take minutes per shift, accuracy is unquestioned, and the repeatability is perfect. Trends are now based on real machine data, without skewing from personal interpretations.
At team leader meeting, projectors display real-time and historical information from the Silchester systems.

Mark Chesworth, supply chain director for Ryvita says the implementation is a “major step forward in terms of information accessibility for the site. It allows live data to be used by the teams in the factory to drive and improve business performance without time being wasted trying to collate vast quantities of information. It also enables the teams to assume real time responsibility for driving their KPI’s [key performance indicators] and to witness the results of their efforts. We believe this evolution will prove to be truly empowering for our production staff.”

Silchester, an industrial information system integrator, was established in 1988 working in process and production industries largely in the pharmaceutical and life sciences markets; project work can be validated to FDA/GAMP level quality.

Also read, from Control Engineering : “

KPIs Made Easy

.”

Cevn Vibert is MES business manager at Silchester Control Systems Ltd.
Edited by Mark T. Hoske, editor in chief , Control Engineering .