In a pioneering step towards increased product quality in western Africa, an Adroit Technologies supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) system was chosen by Reckitt Benkeiser and Industrial Information Technologies (I2T) when the decision was taken to upgrade their Dettol manufacturing plant from manual batch mixing to automated batching and data gathering.
Kobus Sutherland the managing director of I2T sums up the project difficulties, "When we undertake projects in other African countries there is often significant risk of ineffective downtime due to power cuts, bad roads and other non-planned risks. During the project planning phase, we therefore prefer to remove all the risks that we can actually control. One of the ways of achieving this is to use systems like the Adroit scada where we can rely on high levels of support. It is just one less risk to consider!" The Reckitt Benkeiser project was a particular challenge to I2T as it was the first time any automated batch and Adroit scada system were simultaneously introduced to the factory. As a result, the project involved a number of preliminary engineering projects to be undertaken as well.
For example, the building had to be adapted to accommodate the transformation to automated batching and only then could the mechanical, electrical and scada components be undertaken. Frequent power failures meant that a UPS had to be installed in the system as soon as possible. The UPS ensures uptime of at least 30 min.
The project took three months to complete using one engineer for the first two months and two engineers for the last month. Local contractors were deployed to do the wiring for the project. Due to the lack of scada skills in Nigeria, the Adroit scada was also needed to be accessed from South Africa for maintenance and operational requirements. The problem of a lack of experienced scada operators was solved through basic training being provided and the use of the Standard Adroit scada interfaces.
The Adroit scada system is a standalone system running on a Windows XP box controlling one PLC, 75 tags and 80 I/Os and communicates via RS232 connections. Data collection is limited to temperature information and is stored for 30 days as per the clients' requirements. To ensure the product quality Adroit Recipe Manager was used for the scripting of the mixing process.
Future plans involve the automation of other Reckitt Benkeiser plants on the same premises and an upgrade to a central Adroit server thus further improving managements access to the data from the plant. The picture shows the Adroit overview screen from the Reckitt Benkeiser's Nigeria Dettol plant.
For more information contact Megan Davidson, Adroit Technologies, 011 658 8100, [email protected]
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