Potato processing plant - Netherlands

Challenge

The customer’s potato-processing plant had one line that was end-of-life and another that was obsolescent. The main reasons for initiating this project were the following:

• Extending the capacity of the obsolescent line to a level that would allow the production of the other line to be integrated with it; this would then allow the end of life line to be closed.
• Increasing the scale and using up-to-date technology would allow significant savings to be made on raw material, energy, maintenance and labour costs.
• Complying with food legislation.
• Measuring and reporting on downtime.
• Achieving a production of 23 tons of potato chips per hour for 3 weeks running.

STS Doetinchem was awarded the order to carry out all the E&I works for this project.

Solution

In consultation with the customer STS Doetinchem drew up the functional design for the automation and vertical integration. The functionality of the controls was programmed in eight Siemens S7-400 PLC systems.

The user interface consists of a redundant SCADA system (iFix) running on two servers, together with six viewer stations.

The vertical integration of the PLC / SCADA systems with the customer’s SAP system is based on the GE Fanuc Plant Intelligence platform, consisting of the Proficy Historian and Proficy Plant Applications modules. The control panels, all of which were built by STS Doetinchem, are divided over three MCC rooms at the beginning, middle and end of the approximately 120 metre-long production hall. STS Doetinchem also handled the complete building-related installations.

Benefits

• Trained professional technicians available and ready to go
• Strong team commitment to project success
• Performance-driven organisation
• Focus on long-term cost reduction
• Optimised asset performance