Tougher touchscreens cut out downtime

By switching to SafeTTouch 4X touchscreens Nestle has eliminated touchscreen failures and slashed the end-of-shift administration time from five hours to just a few a minutes at one of its US plants.

Automation equipment for the food and drink industry has to be particularly tough to withstand regular washdowns and to provide the level of reliability that is required in an environment where unplanned stoppages are hugely expensive.

In the USA, Nestle has 33 manufacturing facilities, one of which, in Cleveland, Ohio, was suffering from poorly performing industrial touchscreens.

By replacing these with SafeTTouch 4X touchscreens from Dolch Computer Systems, Nestle has eliminated all touchscreen failures and slashed the end-of-shift administration time from five hours to just a few a minutes.

Production at the Cleveland plant centres on a range of around 30 different bouillon-type pastes that are sold to restaurants and cafeterias for use as bases for soups, sauces and gravies.

In some cases it is possible to produce one product immediately after another with no need for a washdown, but during the 20 hours per day that the plant runs, there are still three shift changes and numerous product changeovers that require high-pressure washdowns with strongly caustic solutions.

On the packaging lines, the existing touchscreens were simply used as an interface with a PLC, but there were several instances of water penetrating the housing and causing problems with condensation.

There was also an occasion when an operator accidentally knocked a hole in a touchscreen, and another unit had to be replaced after being damaged by the caustic washdown solution.

A further problem arose when fasteners started to work loose, leading to the supervisors having to check the touchscreen daily to guard against the packaging lines becoming contaminated.

In addition, because it would require valuable engineering time to program the PLC to provide end-of-shift data, operators were still completing paper-based forms so that somebody else could enter this information into a database two or three days later - all of which took about five hours to complete.

When the Dolch representative visited Nestle, the benefits of the SafeTTouch 4X were very apparent.

After the representative had shown how the screen resisted being attacked with a large screwdriver, the engineers from Nestle were confident that the unit would live up to the rest of Dolch's claims.

The SafeTTouch 4X is housed in a 304-grade stainless-steel enclosure sealed to IP66, and features an ultrarugged touchscreen that carries a five-year guarantee.

In addition, the SafeTTouch 4X has an operating temperature range of 0 to 40C, a nonoperating temperature range of -25 to +60C, and is unaffected by extreme humidity.

It will also withstand high-pressure chemical cleaning sprays, solvents, water, grease and other liquids.

Forced air circulation ensures that the electronics are maintained at the optimum temperature, with no risk of condensation forming despite the fully sealed housing.

Careful design of the enclosure ensures that there are no crevices or other 'bug traps', not even around the screen bezel where other designs sometimes give cause for concern.

Whereas conventional touchscreens can suffer and degrade in industrial environments, Dolch uses enhanced infra-red technology that is immune to surface damage such as chips or scratches.

Moreover, the versatile touchscreen can be operated by users wearing gloves or holding a stylus, and the enhanced infra-red technology maintains its calibration over time, never drifting or losing sensitivity.

Because the touchscreen technology does not use overlays, the image clarity from the bright, sharp, high-resolution colour screen is always 100%.

Nestle opted for the model with a 15in (XGA) active matrix colour TFT LCD screen and the optional RayFire digital fibre-optic communications system, which enables the display to communicate with a host computer that is housed in a climate-controlled room away from the production environment.

The PC runs a software package that automates much of the data collection and reporting function that was previously carried out manually.

At the end of each shift, the minimal administrative tasks now take only 2-3min to complete.

Jeff Shiepe, Project Engineer at Nestle, comments: "After over two years of operation, we haven't had a single problem with any of our SafeTTouch 4X screens.

A minute of downtime runs up exorbitant costs, so we can't afford any unscheduled maintenance; all electronic and computer systems should be as bullet-proof as these Dolch screens".

He goes on to describe the additional benefits that the screens have brought: "The old system didn't give us much data about what was happening on the plant floor, how much downtime we were experiencing or the causes of it.

The RayFire-enabled Dolch system allowed us to deploy a Windows-based application to our operators, which means that with a couple of touches, they can enter an abundance of data, monitor the entire line and let management see what's happening in real time".

The combination of improved reliability, reduced administration and better visibility of production data has made the switch to the Dolch SafeTTouch 4X touchscreens an extremely worthwhile investment for Nestle.

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