The Challenge
Crossmuller was tasked with installing a recipe management system for a global food and beverage company for their production of various sauces. Wonderware’s recipe management system was proposed as it would give the company the ability to easily change and alter and add more recipes without the need for any more PLC programming. This project has been a good opportunity for Crossmuller to expand beyond the borders of Australia to Asia.
The recipe system had to integrate with the Siemens PLC coded by a Asian company. This presented two challenges. The first was that of the language barrier making it harder to come to a design understanding between the recipe management system and the PLC code. The second challenge was that of integrating with a Siemens PLC which are a PLC rarely used in Australia.
The Crossmuller Team
Andrew Robinson led the team in Asia. This was Andrew’s first international assignment. Back in Australia Shannan Heinitz provided technical support, whilst Scott Deruniec had the project management role.
Solution
Crossmuller implemented Wonderware’s System Platform coupled with InTouch for System Platform and Recipe Manager Plus to deliver the solution to the customer. Factory Acceptance Testing was completed successfully in Asia with RMP running a recipe one of the four main kettles as well as being displayed on the HMI.
Overall the experience in Asia was good. The Asian company provided excellent hospitality and were also excellent at their jobs. We were able to successfully work together even though there was the language barrier to overcome. Many diagrams were drawn to explain how RMP integrates with the PLC code and how each of capabilities designed by the customer were supposed to behave.
The accommodation provided by the Asian company on their factory site
Next Steps
The equipment will now be transported to South East Asia for installation. Crossmuller is now developing the entire Recipe database and will be on site in Malaysia for Site Acceptance testing later this year.
By Andrew Robinson
