Aging equipment can cause a lot of downtime and reduced production. This flour mill was struggling to meet their production quota due to an outdated control system that kept breaking down and was getting harder and harder to fix—causing more downtime and higher repair costs. By partnering with automation professionals, this mill saw huge gains in safety, production, and future growth opportunity.

With the Wilkins Rogers Mills Mount Joy facility, it was a matter of WHEN they would upgrade their control system, including a programmable logic controller (PLC) from the 1990’s. Parts were getting harder to find and program changes had to be made from Windows 95.

The Wilkins Rogers Mills operations team partnered with a solution partner within the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork program for help in selecting the right control system to meet their needs. The operations team came up with a list of features they wanted from the new system, including sensors on machines to increase worker safety and reduce equipment failure. A big item on the list was that the changeover take place with little or no production downtime. This was not an easy task and took 6 months of planning between the automation engineers and the Wilkins Rogers Mills operations team. When the switch was completed, the Mount Joy facility had a new Rockwell Automation Solution with a Logix Control Platform with a distributed I/O architecture. The Rockwell Automation solution also included redundant HMI servers, allowing production back-up and spare capacity for future applications.

“For the first time, information on wheat extraction, flour yields, and peak-production amounts all feeds into a highly visual display, allowing operators to accurately optimize the process,” Aaron Black, director of operations explained. “And if we’re not meeting our targets on a daily or trending basis, we can track what’s happening to find out why. Our new insights also are invaluable for the maintenance folks.” The added alarm tracking saves a lot of valuable production time due to it alerting to the exact location of the problem. The system also allows support teams to access the system remotely to make any necessary fixes, updates, or to walk maintenance workers through a problem.

This new system has Wilkins Rogers Mills Mount Joy facility’s production moving smoothly with easier production tracking, which leads Wilkins Rogers Mills to look further in the future. They are looking to make the new system the standard in all of their production facilities and are thinking about the other potential system bolt-on equipment that can be added to the system at any time, specifically automated energy monitoring.

To learn how SMC’s Automation Specialists can help build a solution for you, talk to one of SMC’s Automation Experts.

Information Source: efficientplantmag.com and Rockwell Automation