Digital Transformation For a Competitive Edge

Maple Leaf Foods needed to reduce operator training, be nimbler with staffing, and be positioned to respond quickly and effectively to events that happen at any facility. A core part of their strategy to build resiliency within their manufacturing facilities is to coordinate with strategic partners and suppliers to implement a standardized system for controlling, visualizing, and managing operations. This system is used across manufacturing facilities.

Due to its established relationship, Maple Leaf Foods entrusted RidgeTech Automation, a System Integrator in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™ to architect, manage, and implement this standard system.

Maple Leaf Foods and RidgeTech Automation worked alongside Rockwell Automation to design a common controls architecture using ControlLogix® 5580, CompactLogix® 5380, alongside PowerFlex® Variable Frequency Drives and POINT I/O™ and POINT Guard I/O™ modules. A SCADA system for process control and monitoring was also built using FactoryTalk® View SE. This standard system is now used for any new build.

In 2021, Maple Leaf Foods began construction in London, Ontario to build the largest, most technically advanced poultry processing plant in the world. Inside the 660,000 square foot facility would be more than 4,000 pieces of equipment. The project was huge: 175 PLCs and over 1,500 VFDs were implemented.

Once the build phase was complete, Maple Leaf Foods looked for ways to optimize production. One area of focus was the grading and packaging area of the plant. In this area, complex equipment sorts various cuts of poultry and then sends them through a tiered network of highway conveyors. To minimize product waste, Maple Leaf Foods wanted to achieve the highest level of sorting and conveying accuracy.  

RidgeTech used Emulate3D™ digital twin software from Rockwell Automation to create a digital twin of the process. Then, they modeled traffic flow and identified bottlenecks and underutilized areas within the conveyance highway. Machine learning technology was applied to the simulation to find the optimal material flow. The entire study was completed digitally while production continued. The result was a system design that achieved material handling accuracy of more than 99%.

The Maple Leaf Foods team identified an additional spot for standardization within their new system—they wanted to figure out how to best craft terms of performance agreements with the OEMs providing equipment to their manufacturing facilities. To achieve this, they selected Plex Production Monitoring (PM); however, the application of this Plex product would be outside of the typical application. Instead of using it to track OEE, Plex PM would be used to track OEM equipment performance.  

For seamless and creative integration of Plex PM, Maple Leaf Foods once again partnered with RidgeTech. RidgeTech managed the hardware and OT layers and coordinated with both the Plex team and equipment OEMs. To leverage Plex PM for OEM equipment performance data, they used Plex PM to gather metrics like OEM downtime codes, line statistics (if the line was starved upstream or downstream), alarms, and other critical machine insights. This information is then used to write the terms for OEM performance agreements. Maple Leaf Foods’ addition of Plex PM is part of an effort to create consistent downtime data across facility machines with zero operator intervention.

This project is ongoing at Maple Leaf Foods’ Brampton manufacturing plant. Although not its intended application, Plex PM has already improved the company’s OEE due to the full visibility into equipment performance and mitigated downtime. Should they continue witnessing positive results, the Plex smart manufacturing tool will be folded into Maple Leaf Foods’ standard technology suite and implemented into additional facilities accordingly.