A sweet success: Maximizing sugar mill efficiency with EcoStruxureTM Plant
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Africa
Country
- South Africa
Product
- EcoStruxure Plant
- Modicon X80 I/O modules
- ConneXium network switches
- Magelis HMIs
- Telefast ABE wiring interfaces
- Modicon M580 Ethernet programmable automation controllers
- AVEVA’s System Platform
- Historian tand Historian Client
- Intouch HMI
Tech Stack
- IoT
- Automation
- Remote Access
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Process Control & Optimization
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
RCL Foods is a South African food manufacturer that operates three sugar mills, including the Pongola sugar mill. The company acquired the Pongola mill in 2009, but the facility was in dire need of modernization as its proprietary system was almost 30 years old. With outdated software and hardware, the plant used to experience between 33 and 40 blackouts per 39-week season. The production delays became unacceptable and a drop in product quality was noticeable. In 2014, the company decided to initiate an ambitious 5-year DCS migration project to modernize the mill and improve its efficiency.
The Challenge
The Pongola sugar mill, operated by South African food manufacturer RCL Foods, was in dire need of modernization. The proprietary system was almost 30 years old and the plant used to experience between 33 and 40 blackouts per 39-week season. The production delays became unacceptable and a drop in product quality was noticeable. RCL Foods was looking for an off-the-shelf solution that could be expanded over time and that would optimize production efficiency – a scalable system (both hardware and software) that was easy to operate and allowed for remote access. The company wanted to reuse the existing infrastructure where possible, so the new solution had to be both future-proof and backward compatible.
The Solution
RCL Foods picked a full, systemic, IoT-ready solution based on EcoStruxure Plant. The scope of work was broad, from the implementation of connected products (Modicon X80 I/O modules, ConneXium network switches, Magelis HMIs, Telefast ABE wiring interfaces), through edge control (Modicon M580 Ethernet programmable automation controllers), to software and analytics (AVEVA’s System Platform, Historian tand Historian Client, and Intouch HMI). This comprehensive project was designed and implemented by system integrator Control Software Solutions (Pty) Ltd, a Master Alliance Partner and Certified Wonderware Partner based in South Africa, with a proven track record for successfully delivering Schneider Electric solutions. At the heart of the project is System Platform, a scalable solution that integrates the process with the enterprise, unifies all applications in a central hub, and integrates all remote, local, and historian clients into one system platform.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
The Kellogg Company
Kellogg keeps a close eye on its trade spend, analyzing large volumes of data and running complex simulations to predict which promotional activities will be the most effective. Kellogg needed to decrease the trade spend but its traditional relational database on premises could not keep up with the pace of demand.
Case Study
HEINEKEN Uses the Cloud to Reach 10.5 Million Consumers
For 2012 campaign, the Bond promotion, it planned to launch the campaign at the same time everywhere on the planet. That created unprecedented challenges for HEINEKEN—nowhere more so than in its technology operation. The primary digital content for the campaign was a 100-megabyte movie that had to play flawlessly for millions of viewers worldwide. After all, Bond never fails. No one was going to tolerate a technology failure that might bruise his brand.Previously, HEINEKEN had supported digital media at its outsourced datacenter. But that datacenter lacked the computing resources HEINEKEN needed, and building them—especially to support peak traffic that would total millions of simultaneous hits—would have been both time-consuming and expensive. Nor would it have provided the geographic reach that HEINEKEN needed to minimize latency worldwide.
Case Study
Energy Management System at Sugar Industry
The company wanted to use the information from the system to claim under the renewable energy certificate scheme. The benefit to the company under the renewable energy certificates is Rs 75 million a year. To enable the above, an end-to-end solution for load monitoring, consumption monitoring, online data monitoring, automatic meter data acquisition which can be exported to SAP and other applications is required.
Case Study
Coca Cola Swaziland Conco Case Study
Coco Cola Swaziland, South Africa would like to find a solution that would enable the following results: - Reduce energy consumption by 20% in one year. - Formulate a series of strategic initiatives that would enlist the commitment of corporate management and create employee awareness while helping meet departmental targets and investing in tools that assist with energy management. - Formulate a series of tactical initiatives that would optimize energy usage on the shop floor. These would include charging forklifts and running cold rooms only during off-peak periods, running the dust extractors only during working hours and basing lights and air-conditioning on someone’s presence. - Increase visibility into the factory and other processes. - Enable limited, non-intrusive control functions for certain processes.
Case Study
Temperature Monitoring for Restaurant Food Storage
When it came to implementing a solution, Mr. Nesbitt had an idea of what functionality that he wanted. Although not mandated by Health Canada, Mr. Nesbitt wanted to ensure quality control issues met the highest possible standards as part of his commitment to top-of-class food services. This wish list included an easy-to use temperature-monitoring system that could provide a visible display of the temperatures of all of his refrigerators and freezers, including historical information so that he could review the performance of his equipment. It also had to provide alert notification (but email alerts and SMS text message alerts) to alert key staff in the event that a cooling system was exceeding pre-set warning limits.
Case Study
Coca-Cola Refreshments, U.S.
Coca-Cola Refreshments owns and manages Coca-Cola branded refrigerators in retail establishments. Legacy systems were used to locate equipment information by logging onto multiple servers which took up to 8 hours to update information on 30-40 units. The company had no overall visibility into equipment status or maintenance history.
