Case Study

Global CPG Manufacturer Taps Malisko to Be Master Automation Integrator to Achieve High OEE for New US Production Line

Background

A global consumer products manufacturer made the business case to install a new production / packaging line to increase capacity. The CPG manufacturer wanted the new line to achieve, then maintain, a high Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to meet production demands. Malisko was asked to be the Lead Automation Integrator for the new line and develop a fully integrated line control with various OEM equipment.

OBJECTIVES

Achieve a high OEE line performance and optimization to meet aggressive production goals.
Respond instantly to changes in performance effectiveness
Connect the controllers of all machines together on a common network to exchange data
Enable upstream and downstream machine communication.
Institute a standard inter-processor communications schema and structure for the OEM controls engineers to follow.
Provide consistency in the data structures and performance-related nomenclature among the OEM controllers for line performance.
Adhere to the project’s budget and aggressive schedule.

CHALLENGES

The “COVID-19 Effect”
Collaboration had to be mostly “remote”
Subcontractors from other countries had to hire 2nd and 3rd party resources to communicate and work with Malisko, the client and the other OEMs.
Multiple language translations
Communication among international OEMs.
Tying together different machine types and working with different OEMs
Very tight schedule required constant coordination with OEMs
Constantly updating client with status of OEE data implementation.
Connections to devices that were not natively speaking to each other
Some machine controllers were not equipped to talk via ethernet
Weighers and printers not configured for ethernet communications.

SOLUTIONS

Establish clear and effective communications with the control engineers of each OEM supplier.
Maintain a regular cadence of meetings among the OEM engineers/programmers.
Tied together the various OEM controller systems into a “Head PLC” / “Line Control PLC” configuration.
Enabled machine performance optimization via machine-to-machine communications based on the established standard schema and data structure.
Made all logical connections to the “Head” ControlLogix.
Data aggregation of all work cell data to a single point for MES and OEE software platforms.
Facilitated project and production management alignment and coordination
Extension of the customer’s project team
Working with operators, supervisors and leadership
Expanded project scope during on-site startup and commissioning as requested by the client:
We weren’t just on the floor programming controllers
We were coordinating with all the OEMs and filtering their requests to the client
We served as the primary conduit for communication and coordination
Extensive on-site testing and information analysis to verify accuracy and reliability of OEE calculations

RESULTS

Increase efficiency and productivity on the plant floor.
Project scope, schedule and budget were accomplished.
Successfully connected all work cells on one line.
Successfully created dashboards and reported line OEE.
Client has selected Malisko to expand the implementation to the other lines in the facility.

LEARN MORE

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