The Pieman’s Pantry plant in Krugersdorp produces over 11 million pies and pasties every month for local and export markets. Its demanding production schedule requires that all of its machines are operated at near their maximum working capacity and reliability is a pre-requisite.
The Pieman’s Pantry plant in Krugersdorp produces over 11 million pies and pasties every month for local and export markets. Its demanding production schedule requires that all of its machines are operated at near their maximum working capacity and reliability is a pre-requisite.
Pieman's Pantry experienced loss of production caused by the poor reliability of the guillotines used to cut the sausage rolls and other pastries to the correct lengths. The guillotine had been designed to operate with a clutch brake system to drive the cutting edge of the blade. A signal passed from a higher level control system to engage the clutch and this started the cutting process.
The clutch brake mechanism could not stand the stress and strain of starting and stopping multiple times per minute and production was lost every few weeks when the unit failed and had to be replaced.
"Downtime is not only about hours. The knock-on effects are huge. Not only can you not produce the volumes required of your production line but you also find yourself with line operators who have to be paid but are not able to produce. A wasted production line also affects supply and demand issues. There are customers or potential customers who are not able to get their orders on time. Pies on the line are wasted when a lengthy breakdown occurs, as a pie can only stand for a certain period of time before it has to be discarded. Time is also wasted with start up change," comments Adriaan van Niekerk, production manager at Pieman's Pantry. "It is difficult to measure these effects in actual rand value," concludes van Niekerk.
The production personnel called in an engineer from SEW to see if that company could come up with a cost-effective and reliable solution. A tailor-made system was proposed by SEW. Standard off-the-shelf equipment in the form of a Movidrive MDX61B servo controller was supplied for the intelligence and control of the motor, along with a CM geared servo brake motor to provide the muscle to drive the guillotine.
Some additional Ipos Plus programming (on board sequence control) was done by SEW personnel to control the movement of the guillotine. Production is now better and faster than before. The pastries are now precisely cut to within one millimetre, ensuring uniformity and eliminating wastage.
"Although the initial costs of setting up this system seemed high, the long term cost saving and hassle-free operation makes it a very cost effective solution," relates Julian Steinmann, SEW Eurodrive sales engineer for Pieman's Pantry.
Operations engineer, Alec Audie, comments that Pieman's Pantry did an initial trial run of the SEW servo system on one of their lines to establish its effectiveness. "Once we realised the benefits of the system, not just in terms of solving our immediate downtime problem but also in terms of cost saving, we decided to standardise on SEW's servo systems. We are in the process of replacing old equipment on the existing lines with equipment from SEW," enthuses Audie.
Pieman's Pantry achieved record production of 750 000 pies in a 24 hour shift during June, stopping only for the necessary scheduled cleaning in hygienic areas. On average the company produces 550 000 pies per day. The logistics that go into producing this number of pies are extensive with the company using 25 tons of flour, 8 tons of vegetables, 8 tons of pastry fat, 12 tons of beef cubes, 5 tons of cubed chicken breast and 6 tons of mince per day.
With this amount of fresh produce being handled every day and the strict quality control standards that need to be maintained in the factory, downtime has to be avoided at all costs. SEW Eurodrive's 24-hour hotline and the reliability of the SEW products help Pieman's Pantry to minimise downtime and maximise profit.
For more information contact Rene Rose, SEW Eurodrive, +27 (0)11 248 7000, rrose@sew.co.za, www.sew.co.za
| Tel: | +27 11 248 7000 |
| Email: | info@sew.co.za |
| www: | www.sew-eurodrive.co.za |
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