Optimizing efficiency on the plant floor

By Cheran D.P.
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In industrial manufacturing, system integrators are often faced with the difficult task of increasing production efficiency without changing existing processes on the plant floor.

This was just the case with Kaleesuwari, an India-based manufacturer of edible oil. Working together, SAS Automation and Red Lion Controls were able to implement a solution that enabled the company to increase the accuracy of its production data, avoid unplanned downtime, remotely monitor machine status and streamline its stock and production – all without changing its existing production process.

 

The Problem

Edible oil is a highly competitive market. Delivering health and wellness through their superior products, Kaleesuwari is a company that prides itself on its responsiveness to customer requirements. However, it was unable to receive real-time data from the 24-line machines operating in its plant, and, therefore, no accurate data were being collected on production output.

It was also experiencing significant challenges around workforce schedule monitoring, unable to match worker shift hours with production. The company previously tried to solve these issues by employing additional labor to manually count the production for each machine, but this led to many human errors – it was essentially guesswork on bag orders, with a great deal of raw materials being wasted.

Because of these inaccuracies, senior management made frequent visits to the plant floor to identify production inefficiencies. Relying heavily on intercommunication with their operators, concerns were manually logged into a spreadsheet – an imprecise process that provided no real actionable data that could result in a comprehensive resolution strategy.

The lack of proper production data also significantly impacted customer deliveries, ultimately affecting customer retention. As a manufacturer of fast-moving consumer goods products, turnaround must be rapid to remain competitive in the market.

The customer needed to obtain accuracy in its production data, avoid unplanned downtime, remotely monitor machine status and streamline stock and production. This required a solution that would not change the existing production process but rather optimize it for better management and logging of data. To meet this challenge, there were many different elements involved, including the machines, production team and senior management. Moreover, it was critical to register details from the existing PLCs, presenting another challenge, as other PLC vendors were involved.

 

The Solution

The Kaleesuwari management team was introduced to the concept of data mining from performing control systems, agnostic to any PLC installed. SAS Automation was used as the system integrator, supplying installation and commissioning of the system/project. Red Lion provided the production department with a solution that included the functionality and features that enabled accurate production data on demand. With agnostic hardware, easy-to-understand visualization formats and remote monitoring of data, the customer’s challenges were solved effectively.

 

Results

Since the implementation, Kaleesuwari has experienced many positive results. Automatic time logging with production data is helping the company understand the performance and capacity of each machine. To date, it has experienced an 8% improvement in machine output per line. However, it continues to fine-tune the process to gain further efficiencies from production lines.

Featuring an HMI dropdown box that lists possible reasons for a machine failure, operators simply click on the appropriate pre-programmed explanation. Management is now immediately notified when a breakdown occurs and the basis for the problem, as well as contextual data for the machine, helping the company to better understand root causes and track recurring issues.

Within the first four months, Kaleesuwari reported a 40-hours cost saving in machine downtime. Collecting production and downtime data from 24 machines, all Delta PLCs and HMIs are connected with PTVs and synced to PTV screens, allowing for remote monitoring.

Kaleesuwari now has access to real-time data for raw input, packet production, oil loss and total production output, leading to overall plant performance improvements. As a result, errors in bag counts have significantly decreased. With data accessed directly from the machine on packaging bags used, the company has experienced a 15% reduction in bag waste per line.

The improvements have led to an increase in manpower efficiencies in other areas of the Kaleesuwari plant. Providing indispensable data that can help the company achieve increases in revenue and customer retention, these successes have led to discussions for further installations within the plant.

With approximately 16 lines in total, the customer plans to install more streamlining solutions on at least four additional lines. While more data collection is needed to determine the impact on sales, the implementation of the automation and networking solutions has opened up the opportunity for Kaleesuwari to utilize other products within the company and implement cloud-based solutions for all six of its plants.


Cheran D.P. is a sales manager for Red Lion Controls in South India, with 15 years of experience in sales of automation products in the automotive industry. He can be reached at Cheran.DP@redlion.net.