Flour milling facility gets fully automated

October 2001 System Integration & Control Systems Design

AIB Bakery erected a fully automated flour milling, premix manufacturing and packaging facility in Mount Edgecombe to supply its franchise of bakeries with premix.

NC Automation Engineering was awarded the automation and electrical contract of the green fields project, which involved the automation of wheat intake and transfer; cleaning and tempering; wheat milling; the bulk flour intake system; finished product recipe batch handling; a built out-loading system; finished product packaging; purchases and sales systems; stock control system; maintenance log and reporting; production reporting; and lab test reporting.

The system was designed around a Windows NT Ethernet network, connecting two of Omron's CS1 PLCs to two Adroit 4.2 scada PCs via a 100 Mbps Switch. A central server PC supports the plant SQL Server 7.0 database.

Using an OPC client driver on a Klinkmann Omron Ethernet OPC server, high-speed communication between the Omron's PLCs and Adroit was made possible. All other computers on the site network have access to both the intranet and the ability to view live scada information via a remote user interface.

The completed system is split into two areas - intake and mill section, and the finished products section. Each section is controlled by its own Omron PLC and Adroit Agent Server.

The wheat intake system is able to bring in wheat from multiple rail or road trucks and has an electronic plug ID device sequence that keeps track of all data associated with the corresponding wheat being offloaded. Gross and tare masses, truck details and other important information is captured in the database.

The switched Ethernet network provides robust and high-speed access between the scadas and the PLCs, and between the scadas and the server, while facilitating access to both PLCs from the maintenance PC and access to the intranet from any PC on the network.

Information entries - such as recipe design, dispatch details, stock takes, maintenance reports and the results of laboratory tests - are logged through to a central SQL database from any PC on the network via custom-designed web pages making up the sitewide intranet. Production floor information obtained via the sensors connected to Omron's PLCs is logged through Adroit 4.2, via its new DBAccess agent, to an SQL database. Two Adroit 1 500 Tag Agent Server computers were used - one computer associated with the mill section, and the other with the finished products section.

Yelland Control

(011) 874 7770

[email protected]

www.yelland.co.za

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