Cerealia is one of the largest food and beverage companies in Scandinavia. It develops, produces and markets cereal-based products for the domestic markets in northern Europe and for export to other parts of the world.
At its factory in Jarna, near Stockholm in Sweden, Cerealia produces such brands as Gyllenhammars Havregryn, Start, Kungsörnen pasta and AXA muesli products. Originally a pasta production site, the factory still produces approximately 21 000 tonnes of pasta each year. However, since the move of the AXA grain-mill to the Jarna site in the late seventies, the focus for this site has moved towards being an outright cereal producer. At 20 000 tonnes, current production of grain products almost equals that of pasta and production of cereal products stands at 6000 tonnes.
A staff complement of 150 produce 180 different products using over 700 raw materials. The factory comprises a grain-mill, an extruder (crushing and forming/sizing facility), and a mixing plant for muesli.
In 2004, Cerealia started a major project to increase the production capacity throughout the entire plant for similar products. A central storage facility was built next door to the production plant to handle the increase in capacity. This facility is capable of storing 25 000 pallets.
Gearing up for the future
Until recently the Jarna factory used 10 different batching solutions, a number of which were becoming outdated and inefficient. Cerealia was also experiencing increasing difficulty gaining access to spare parts and product support.
"When you reach a situation like that, you have no other choice but to start looking for new solutions," said Ingvar Malm, automation engineer at the Jarna factory. "When our Batch system for FruitMüsli became too old, we started looking for a new solution and found CitectSCADA Batch. At that time we knew nothing about either Beijer Electronics or Citect, but whilst talking to a number of their customers we got nothing but good feedback."
Meeting the requirements
Cerealia had two major requirements for the new Batch system.
"It was imperative that the batch solution complies with the 'ISA S88 Batch Control' standard," said Malm. "The second requirement was that we had to be able to keep our existing PLCs and weighing equipment that was already working properly on the FruitMüsli production line. This meant that a solution that was hardware independent was important. After seeing a presentation and a product demonstration of CitectSCADA Batch we felt that it was a solution that met our requirements and we decided to use it in a pilot project."
Focusing on the operator
"The new system was surprisingly easy to implement," said Malm. "It took no more than 10 minutes to swap from the old to the new system, and it is still very easy to swap back to the old system if required. Another surprise was the reaction from the operators, they were all happy with the new system. As the structure and operating procedures are different in the new system, I was expecting to get complaints from them during the initial period, but this did not happen."
According to Malm the CitectSCADA Batch system is now in full production and is performing well.
"The analysis we have done so far has shown significant reductions in administrative load. It is also easier for the operators to empty tanks and make sure that tanks are filled with the correct raw material," said Malm.
Talking about his expectations for production efficiency improvements using CitectSCADA Batch, Ingvar Malm concludes: "It certainly looks very good."
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