Enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) software, coupled with innovative ways of displaying information, is delivering such returns at plants large and small.  Dig in to find out what it does and how it can work for you. Pepsi Bottling Ventures is the nation’s largest privately held Pepsi-Cola bottler, operating 28 bottling and distribution facilities that serve more than nine million consumers across the United States. The company’s plant in Nampa, Idaho supplies four beverage-distribution centers in the Pacific Northwest and has contributed to the parent company’s successful operations with performance that ranks among the most efficient in the organization. It’s done so despite the fact that it is the smallest facility in the company’s nationwide network of bottling plants and has been in operation just five years.

One of the methods the plant uses to help it become so efficient involves the deployment of FactoryWidgets, a software package developed by Apex Software Development, a division of Apex Manufacturing Solutions in Boise, Idaho. The application is sold and supported by Software Toolbox in Charlotte, N.C. “Widgets” are simple, no-hassle and affordable mini-applications that display user-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) on desktop personal computers (PCs) without the need for thick client software or even an Internet browser.

“We’ve been using the FactoryWidgets for just a little more than two months and they’ve already been very well received by our people,” says Bacon. “They’re an unobtrusive reporting mechanism that people at all levels of technical knowledge can understand and use for monitoring real-time data for both primary and ancillary management needs.”

This is important, Bacon explains, because in the beverage industry “just to stay competitive, we have to run with leaner head count. The widgets allow us to set up both primary and ancillary tasks to run in the background right on people’s computers. When they need to check that data, they now can do it right on their screens rather than having to go out to the physical equipment, which frees up personnel time for more value-added tasks rather than occupying them with documentation and record-keeping.”

The Nampa facility is fairly typical in that it has Invensys Operations Management’s Wonderware human-machine interface (HMI) workstations on the plant floor that enable operators to interact with the production processes. Since the quality control staff works both on the plant floor and in the lab, they needed applications for both areas.

Widgets rule

If someone is out on the floor and something goes wrong, they can use an HMI console to see what’s going on and acknowledge alarms, start or stop machines or take whatever action is appropriate. While in the lab, however, they typically don’t need that level of detail or interactivity. They are collecting and analyzing running samples, filling logbooks and manually entering data into the Wonderware systems. It’s now easy for them to glance over at the FactoryWidgets screen on the lab PC. If they see something that needs attention, such as when an analog orb goes from green to red, they can click on the widget to link to more detail.

A WidgetServer is installed on the same server as the plant’s Wonderware Performance, Historian and ActiveFactory reporting systems. The data used to populate the widgets is collected primarily from the historian, which in turn gets its data from PLCs, Wonderware HMIs and Wonderware Performance reports. From that central hub, the widgets are initially served for users in the QC lab, on the production manager’s desktop and at the operations manager’s office, which is located remotely about a mile from the bottling plant.

“We started with quality control because it’s so critical to all our operations, both in terms of production operations and monitoring of environmental issues,” Bacon says. “We only have a half dozen people in the lab, which is the entire department for a factory of our size, and it saves them tremendous amounts of time. They no longer have to physically go out and check statuses such as water process settings or filling stations, but can monitor activities on-screen, right on their desktops. They can thus handle other tasks for their manager without worrying about where they are currently with a production run, so they can do a lot more developmental types of activities.” Hence the freed-up hour per day per person, he adds.

Improve audits

The Nampa facility will soon be using the FactoryWidgets to bolster its results for an annual corporate audit done by Pepsi Cola North America (PCNA) and for third-party audits done by the American ...