The company has a diverse spread of manufacturing operations in many geographic areas. There are varying degrees of automation, with diversity of control platforms and software environments.
As a pilot facility, the Ibyahi plant operates on a small scale, allowing van Schoor a chance to try out new products and techniques before implementation in larger breweries. In addition, the plant’s scale makes it ideal for training technicians and operators in these new technologies.
It’s a go
He reports that this is a small test, but results are already appearing. In order to test the new technology, van Schoor installed a traditional Wonderware InTouch application and an IAS in order to understand issues of migration and integration. He is satisfied enough with the results that the company has made a “go” decision to implement in a larger brewery.
SABMiller plants have a variety of platforms, but often rely on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) from Siemens, batch software from Rockwell Automation and human-machine interface (HMI) software from Wonderware. van Schoor evaluated ArchestrA because it was touted as an open platform that would work with all these products.
The main benefit seen to date is in engineering. All of the corporate standards are implemented as software objects. These objects promote reuse of engineering for different processes and plants, including products from the various suppliers. The existing library of standards can be incorporated into the common ArchestrA architecture.
There is still work for van Schoor to do. The process must next be integrated with SABmiller’s manufacturing execution system (MES). Overall robustness of the platform must still be tested, too. But so far, the results are encouraging.
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