Control system boosts bakery ingredients output

Advanced Technical Software (ATS), a CitectScada integrator, has recently commissioned a plant wide control system for BakeMark at its Manchester based factory.

Advanced Technical Software (ATS), a CitectScada integrator, has recently commissioned a plant wide control system for BakeMark at its Manchester based factory.

The new system, based on Mitsubishi PLCs and CitectScada, is key to enabling BakeMark to expand its production of bread improvers, currently running at of around 17.5kt per annum, by an additional 10kt, of predominately cake mixes.

The ATS automation and monitoring system covers all materials handling, storage, weighing, batching and blending and tracing of over 2000 different ingredients in use, as well as tracking over a million individual items throughout the factory.

It replaces an original Mitsubishi PLC system installed around 10 years ago.

The new system retains the existing plant I/O, however, the main processor has been upgraded to the latest Mitsubishi Q series specification and PLC to PLC communications have been upgraded to Ethernet.

In addition, as the whole factory is totally dependent on the control system a high quality server is installed with inbuilt redundancy via dual power supplies, memory, and disc storage via six hard drives organised as two raid arrays.

In charge of the project for Advanced Technical Software was Managing Director, Geoffrey Graves.

He pointed-up the very specific requirements of the Scada system used at BakeMark.

"Although most Scada packages include some form of product batching and control, the very exact requirements of this plant precluded their use.

Our assessment in this respect was totally objective as we are an approved systems integrator for a number of leading Scada systems.

The package that we finally decided upon, CitectScada, has proven to be the correct one, successfully handling all the manifold requirements of what is a very large and complex project".

"Citect offered us the tightly integrated easy networking we required with powerful facilities for generating complex and scaleable graphics.

We also benefited from the power of the package's inbuilt Ci-code, C-like programming language, and the ease of data access and interaction we were able to achieve using Citect API function calls.

What was most important though was Citect's distributed architecture, which proved perfect for our strategy of dividing the plant control operation into two distinct areas".

"As part of our strategy we developed two bespoke application packages, Plant Manager and Line Manager, which uses CitectScada as its platform.

Plant Manager handles all material imports, the ingredients preparation area and mixer additions.

It also provides administration facilities, to handle recipe set-up, materials tracking and reporting".

"Each production line is also supported by its own PC running Line Manager.

These Line Manager PCs allow production scheduling on a line basis and also display all plant status information, mimics, production and plant alarms together with sophisticated maintenance and setup facilities.

Each production line is dedicated to a particular mixer; however, any Line Manager PC can control all production lines dependant on a user's authorisation".

"The inherent flexibility of the Line Manager system provides the production manager at BakeMark with the ability to predetermine the work to be carried out over a forthcoming period or shift.

The system offers the capability of storing up to thirty runs for each mixer, with each run given a projected start time, so that notice can be given of which pallet and/or rigid containers need to be prepared to meet production requirements".

"All data files for Plant Manager and Line Manager are stored on the Citect server in a database format, providing extensive file security and backup facilities for all areas of production and plant information from a single secure location.

The Citect server also acts as the PLC communications hub for all Line Manager systems on the network and allows easy addition of extra client PCs using the inbuilt computer connection wizard".

"In addition to high levels of plant control and production flexibility, the system we have designed and commissioned provides BakeMark with high levels of transparency.

The CitectScada package allows authorised users to request a number of reports, all of which are generated using industry standard Crystal Reports.

These allow full traceability of all materials and their location.

For materials already used in production the reports allow backwards tracing from an individual product batch code".

"Finally, the system includes very detailed plant alarm and diagnostics allowing even an inexperienced operator to quickly pinpoint any plant malfunction or fault condition.

Normal advanced alarm facilities are included but these are supplemented by an on-screen status monitoring and diagnostics panel for each plant item showing its current status and maintenance information".

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