Cheese manufacturing is a complex process with essentially zero tolerance for errors at each step. It is also a process that has to yield consistent end products because of the zero tolerance of its consumers for variances in taste, texture and all the other factors that makes them choose a specific brand of cheese.
To help them maintain the highest possible level of consistent quality, Oregon-based co-op, Tillamook County Creamery Association has chosen Wonderware's FactorySuite range of scada, MES and realtime database solutions.
"We were looking for a process control and monitoring system that would both document our process and allow us to look into that process from any point in the plant," says James McMullen, Tillamook's Senior Vice President and CEO. "We sought a good operator interface system that would give us a single view into any of the multiple process steps we use and we wanted a statistical process control (SPC) package that would allow us to maintain tighter control over the cheese-making process. We also wanted better inventory control so that we could track inventory throughout the plant and documents it on a realtime basis."
"In addition, we wanted complete traceability of product ingredients and genealogy of all finished products. The Work In Progress (WIP) tracking system had to be able to seamlessly handle both batch tracking of bulk product and discrete tracking of individual packaged goods. We felt that we needed this high level of capability because, although we had never had to do a product recall, one of our primary goals was to create a system whereby we could handle any potential recall in a prompt and efficient manner."
The selected solution for transforming more than 850 000 litres of milk a day into an assortment of finished and traceable products was Wonderware's FactorySuite. The InTouch human-machine interface (HMI) software provides the operator interface for much of the cheese-making process. The InTrack manufacturing execution system (MES) is the heart of the WIP tracking system while the IndustrialSQL Server database is the high-performance, relational database that stores all historical and realtime process information.
InTrack switches from a bulk ingredient tracer to discrete mode when tons of Cheddar curd is cut into 20 kg blocks of Cheddar which are vacuum-packed in their individual bags that are weighed before being wrapped in cardboard boxes and labelled with their own product ID codes. This ID includes the date of production, weight and VAT number. Pallet ID information is added when the boxes enter the plant's automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS). InTrack correlates this information all the way back to the individual batch of milk that arrived by tanker truck.
"This tracking system has meant that we can match cheese batch quality records against inventory levels and retail store sales data so that we can produce the optimal amount of cheese varieties for what people want to buy in stores. This way, there is no cheese that overstays its welcome," explains Sherman Lucas, Director of Operations. "Each day we use our accounting system to tally cheese orders all over the country to determine what cheese should be cut and packaged for shipment. These customer orders are matched against customer inventories of ripe cheese blocks and these pallets are selected to be pulled from the ASRS and taken to the packaging lines."
Tillamook now has better visibility over the entire process chain, from incoming bulk raw materials to outgoing discrete product packages. The system is really the ultimate in business systems because it interfaces conveniently, accurately and precisely with the ASRS inventory system as well as with the company's accounting systems.
"Unlike most enterprise systems, however, InTrack serves as the heart of the complete chain of process control, tracking and accounting systems," says Tim Fief, Chief Technology Officer at system integrator Progressive Software Solutions. "All other systems feed off the data created by InTrack and stored in the IndustrialSQL Server database whereas in most other conventional approaches, the plant floor applications use the financial and enterprise systems as the primary data source."
Yet another practical and successful example of Wonderware's bottoms-up approach to manufacturing - where the dog wags the tail.
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