sab-abi packaging line performance

About Amalgamated Beverage

Industries

ABI, the soft drink division of The South African Breweries Limited, is one of the leading soft drink businesses in the international SABMiller plc group of companies and remains one of the largest producers and distributors of the Coca-Cola Company brands in the southern hemisphere.

ABI was established in Johannesburg in 1976 as a result of beverage manufacturing and marketing agreements between The Coca-Cola Export Corporation of the United States, Cadbury-Schweppes (South Africa) Limited and The South African Breweries Limited (now SABMiller plc).

ABI accounts for approximately 60% of Coca-Cola’s sales in South Africa. They sell and distribute over 260 stock-keeping units covering more than 32 brands and 20 pack sizes into a customer base topping 40 000. The company also partners with organisations that help to alleviate the day-to-day impact of pollution on the environment.

INDUSTRY: FOOD AND BEVERAGE WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Faced with the challenge of commissioning a new packaging line in time for the annual summer run on soft drinks,

Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI), the soft drink division of The South African Breweries Limited, turned to line

performance improvement for a solution. This solution came with its own implementation challenges, including OEM coding

standards, infrastructure installation and technology maturity.

SAB-ABI packaging line performance SAB’s soft drink division, ABI, uses Wonderware MES to improve packaging line performance

Business requirements

The main business goal was to improve and accelerate packaging line commissioning which led to the

necessity for tracking machine performance parameters, reducing manual data capture, improving the

accuracy of measurements and establishing reference points in order to better evaluate the reports from

OEMs regarding the performance of their machines.

“This last point is of great importance to us,” says John Coetzee, SAB Business Systems Manager,

Manufacturing. “OEMs are responsible for the performance and the commissioning of their machines

until handover and without a yardstick, it would be difficult for us to evaluate the meaning of the statistics

they provide.”

Another objective of this project was to serve as “proof of concept” regarding the implementation of

OMAC / PackML standards as well as the level of interaction that would be required with OEMs. “We also

wanted to evaluate the available toolsets that could help us with performance improvements and

determine what part of the project yielded the most value,” adds Coetzee.

Project scope

SAB selected system integrator EOH Mining and Manufacturing (EOHMM) to implement the project for

the soft drinks line being commissioned at ABI Pretoria. EOHMM was charged with compiling the user

requirements specification, doing a thin-slice implementation for the filler, developing and implementing

the full application right through to the end-user reports, doing the factory acceptance testing,

commissioning the system and training users and the technical team on how to manage and maintain the

application.

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SAB-ABI packaging line performance WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA


The new system would have to:

Leverage the existing and mature SAP process order / Daily

Production Reporting (DPR) facilities

Conform with international standards (OMAC/PackML)

Conform with SAB standards with respect to HMI/SCADA (mimics,

etc.), ArchestrA, naming of plant equipment and also the DPR which

has its own standard for the classification of faults and fault codes

Capture downtime through the OMAC model for the filler as well as

the rest of the line equipment (the filler being more complex than

the rest of the equipment since it required operator input for

context such as faulty raw material, up or downstream stoppages,

etc.)

Software selection

The software chosen to address these and other issues included the

Wonderware Performance (MES) software, System Platform ArchestrA-

based application development infrastructure, InTouch HMI/SCADA,

Information Server web portal and real-time Historian. “From Microsoft,

we used the Hyper V 2008 Virtualisation solution as well as SQL 2005 /

Reporting Services and Windows 2003 / Server Platform,” says EOHMM

MES Specialist Paul Kotzé. “In addition, we used the Siemens S7

300/400 PLC suite driver from Software Toolbox and the ProsCon OPC

client for interfacing to the Palletiser and Caser.

System overview

The project started in August of 2008 and is currently on-going with a

number of future enhancements planned.

“Since we didn’t want to be the middle man, EOHMM was to interface

directly with the packaging line equipment OEM who, in this case, is

KHS,” says Coetzee. “We took a collaborative engineering approach

involving the ABI process control manager who advised regarding

processes and procedures, the SAB Manufacturing Systems division for

design guidelines and standards and EOHMM for all the engineering

aspects. This worked very well.”

With reference to figure 1, production orders generated by SAP are

currently entered manually into the MES in the same way that lost time

and production quantities are fed back to SAP. Eventually, this will be

automated through the integration of MES and ERP functions.

“Wonderware’s Performance (MES) software is required to add context

to the captured information, without which the raw data isn’t too

helpful,” says Coetzee. “The software also tracks production volumes

and deliveries against the downloaded production order.”

The system design is based on the existing DPR standards for reason

code groupings and makes use of the System Platform’s object-oriented

technology to define standard components ranging from work order

schedules to conveyors (including air conveyors used for aseptic

conditions). “The ability to define standardised components greatly

reduces engineering effort in the long run,” says Kotzé. “It also makes

their maintenance and deployment a great deal easier.”

What didn’t make things easier was that the project was being

implemented at the same time as the packaging line it was to monitor

was being commissioned. “The focus is naturally on the line itself being

able to deliver the goods and not on the software infrastructure that

will monitor it,” says Coetzee, “and this made life quite difficult for

EOHMM.”

The InTouch screens show the standardised PackML / OMAC

information blocks which display the state of the various machines (see

figure 4). To prevent operator confusion, only the availability

component of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) information is

normally shown although the full OEE dashboard is available on request.

In addition to OEE dashboards, any specified portion of the HMI screens

can be made to display various information such as downtime Pareto

About OMAC and PackML

OMAC stands for the Organisation for Machine Automation and Control and the PackML standard does the following:

Defines line types from a stand-alone unit (such as a filler or labeller) to a fully-integrated packaging line

Defines machine states – e.g. running, stopped, paused

Defines a list of tag names, definitions and data sets

Shows how to use these for communication and use of information from machinery to other machinery and higher-level systems

2

Figure 1: System landscape and architecture

Blow Moulder(where bottles are

produced or “blown”)

Labeller(where bottles get

labelled)

Filler(where bottles are

filled)

Blender(where the syrup

concentrate is

blended)

Caser(where filled bottles

are packed into cases)

Palletiser(where filled cases are

palletised)

Case Washer(where returned

crates get washed)

Figure 2: The packaging process at ABI



charts (including the reason for machine stoppages as well as stoppage

frequency and duration), job progress and live or historical performance

trending. The selected portion of the screen can also be used for

handling process orders.

“The accuracy of the downtime reports is such that even the OEM is

using them to troubleshoot their equipment in preference to the

manual tracking sheets they normally use when commissioning,” says

Coetzee.

Benefits

Accurate and real-time downtime reporting – has proved of great

business value to ABI (e.g. raw material quality) and diagnostic value

to the OEM

More accurate estimate of reject counts/crates on the line – it was

previously very difficult to do this since all the information wasn’t

readily available. It’s now possible to more accurately forecast

where production will stand at the end of the day

Openness – OMAC/PackML and ISA-95 compliance will provide far

more flexibility in the future and allow enhancing the solution

through product upgrades

Reporting of all micro stops – automatic logging of stoppages, no

matter their duration, has eliminated the error-prone method of

manual logging. “Major stoppages are well known but it’s the micro

stops that kill performance,” says Coetzee

Analysis capability – being in a database rather than captured

manually, information is now readily available for any number or

types of analyses

3

“The System Platform’s Object Oriented Technology and centralised development environment means that plant objects are defined once, edited if necessary and immediately deployed to all their instances throughout the plant. No more running around with memory sticks.”

Paul Kotzé, EOHMM MES Specialist

Fig 3: System topology



For further information contact Jaco Markwat at Wonderware Southern Africa

tel: +27 11 607 8303 | e-mail: [email protected]

Summary and conclusion

According to Coetzee, having the system integrator deal directly with

the OEM turned out to be a “perfect” arrangement. “EOHMM talking

directly with KHS went a long way towards eliminating

misunderstandings, long lead times and other delays.”

Perhaps the single most outstanding feature of the implementation was

the adoption of international standards (OMAC / PackML / ISA-95) and

the adherence to internal standards (DPR). “Packaging line equipment

manufacturers used to play it close to the chest with proprietary

solutions that made us very wary because they would lock us in. But

since they’ve adopted open standards, we are keener to buy these

solutions because we know they will have interoperability and will be

able to be integrated with other systems. So the irony is that the tactic

of proprietary systems designed to lock in customers actually sold less

then open systems with interoperability.”

Today’s MES implementations are a far cry from the “big bang”

approach of the past. They can be installed gradually and the success of

each incremental implementation measured before contemplating the

next move while adherence to standards like ISA-95 ensure that all the

pieces of the puzzle will actually fit together over time.

4

“The accuracy of the downtime reports is such that even the OEM is using them to troubleshoot their equipment in preference to the manual tracking sheets they normally use when commissioning.” John Coetzee, SAB Business Systems Manager, Manufacturing

Figure 4: InTouch screen showing the status of some of the packaging line machines as well as a Work Order being entered into the MES system

sab-abi packaging line performance

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