By Jim Bresler, Director of Product Management, Food & Beverage, Plex by Rockwell Automation
In the fast-paced world of food production where quality and efficiency go hand-in-hand, every element of the manufacturing process matters. For Summer Garden Foods, it was essential to increase efficiency to keep up with the more than 100,000 cases of sauce it produced each week.
As demand surged and competition grew fiercer, the spotlight turned to one specific challenge: maximizing overall equipment efficiency (OEE) in a factory already running 24 hours a day, five days a week. However, a significant hurdle stood in their way: Prior to 2022, they lacked comprehensive data visibility, which prevented Summer Garden Foods from identifying downtime when kettle yields weren’t aligning with run times.
To solve this, the company sought to track downtime at a more detailed level, starting with its filler machine. The sauce producer adopted the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform by Rockwell Automation, which allowed them to connect, automate, track and analyze data from its machinery.
This approach was especially beneficial because it was scalable if and when they decided to make changes. The filler machine also was already controlled by Allen-Bradley® 5300 series ControlLogix programmable controllers from Rockwell Automation, which were bringing in large quantities of data.
By combining these two solutions, the manufacturer was able to program and extract data reports that pulled data from the controllers and several other sources.
Minor Adjustments or Major Downtime?
Within a few weeks of implementing the solution, Summer Garden Foods unearthed four hours of downtime per 12-hour shift. This downtime stemmed from machine operators habitually opening the filler machine door for minor adjustments throughout the day. Although each adjustment would only take a few minutes, the continuous disruption of operations added up to the filler machine being down for a third of each day.
