Customer
Sonac
One of our customers is developing a powder conveyor for bagging a finished product towards the bagging plant. They asked us to make the bagging line, the silos for the finished product and the BigBag infeed for this powder transport. The bagging line is the last part of a production line, to prepare finished product for delivery to the end customers.
Sonac
Operating philosophy & Siemens PCS7
(Animal) food industry
The Netherlands
Multiple feed options; the powder transport system allows a product to be fed to the packaging machine from different sources. The transport is pneumatic and starts and stops fully automatically, based on the status of the bagging line and the type of product to be bagged. Securing product mixing is of course part of the delivery.
As for us, the challenge lies in the fact that the entire pre-production line will only be commissioned next year. As well as parts of the powder transport not being physically present at out customer’s premises. Despite this, the customer wanted products to be processed on the bagging line with the BigBag within two weeks of the order being placed.
To achieve this, we built a temporary system in an MCC room. The MCC room is where the control equipment is located. The temporary system allowed us to test the pneumatic conveyor and BigBag station. We then commissioned the entire conveyor within two weeks, allowing the customer to process products on the line. During this test phase, we were also able to adjust and fine-tune the bagging line in consultation with the customer. With this working method, we achieved the desired result for our customer. This form of out-of-the-box thinking and flexible action exemplifies the way in which we tackle challenges.
After the testing phase, we integrated pneumatic conveying into the existing PCS7 application. From the point of view of our 'operating philosophy', we implemented a bagging line that can operate fully automatically. At this stage, operation by an operator is not necessary. With the emphasis on 'can', because we made the system such that an operator always has the possibility to take over control.
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