The Cadbury's chocolate factory in Port Elizabeth recently installed a third new chocolate crumb reactor and chose to combine this more advanced technology with its preferred supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) system from Adroit.
Cadbury's project manager Mike Ehrich explains: "The factory produces all Cadbury's chocolate for the South African market and even the slightest batching errors can cause significant product and raw material wastage. We therefore consistently look for innovative new products and methodologies to reduce these risks. The Adroit scada provides us with cutting edge innovation, and is also flexible enough for us to try some of our own ideas and innovations." The new scada system marked a change in the normal configuration including, the use of Control Logic PLCs, the change to Ethernet and fibre-optics for the field I/Os.
Cadbury's runs Adroit Version 6 on a Windows XP platform from its central management office which controls six different environments installed over the last eight years in the factory. The various powders used in the making of chocolate are weighed and blown into the reactor through valves. Cocoa liquor and water are then added. The reactor is run and vacuum removes moisture from the mixture producing a coarse powder. Vegetable fats are then added to produce the product. To facilitate the three operators being able to perform efficiently, each workstation is fitted with two 19" screens.
To increase the cost effectiveness of the Adroit scada system, the Adroit Marshalling Agent was extensively used to monitor the digital scan points thus allowing significantly more scan points to be monitored. The new facility has over 8000 scanned tags, 250 digital and 40 analog I/Os measuring and monitoring temperature, pressure and weight among other things. The information is stored in a Microsoft Access database.
The operators are notified of problems via the Adroit Alarming, which uses colour and pop-up boxes depending on the particular requirements of the environment. The operators then have the ability to 'drill down' through the various components to find where the problem actually is, thereby facilitating the fast and efficient location of the problem which can then be remedied expediently. The Adroit graphic interface was used for recipe set-up and process initiation.
Strong local support and the excellent customer service are the hallmarks of this successful, cutting edge seven month project. This recent Adroit installation comes on the back of the successful completion of Project Olympus several years ago, when Cadbury's set about creating a world class manufacturing plant with state-of-the-art facilities and manufacturing best practices and product. Adroit was then also selected as the window into this three storey (plus mezzanine levels) plant, which is largely unmanned.
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