Product production chain tracing system

Project description

A large enterprise of food production (bakery), which sells its products for export, asked for the creation of a tracking system for the passage of the product along the production line. Drawing up ‘passports’ of each batch of product is a necessary condition for further improving the efficiency and quality of production.

The starting point of the technological line is the dough preparation department, in which the bowls with the sponge and dough are kneaded and fermented. The tracking system allows you to assign each batch a unique number, remember the batch time and the bowl number in which it fermented. If a fault occurred while working on one of the sections, this sign also appears in the ‘passport’ record of the sponge.

For example, such signs are the irregular working frequency of the machines, the time of fermentation, the idle time between cycles, the violation of the bowl sequence between the mixers (this is controlled by identification systems), emergency stops, etc.

The ultimate goal for the technologists was to collect the statistics of the mixtures and identify those parameters that determine the good quality of the product. Without a tracking system, this is not possible – the line is a set of independent installations, the operator of each of which operates at its own discretion, enters its corrections, adjustments, etc. However, this operator may not know that his party has already received a a-priory low-quality party, which probably does not need to be left on the line.

Thus, all production workers know exactly how a particular emergency situation worsens quality, but no one knows how to guarantee a good quality product (there are too many unrelated factors – for example, it can be considered that the cause is elevated humidity at the proofing site, but in fact the reason may be an increased delay time for the mixer to start at the beginning of the line). After the accumulation of statistical data, it is possible, by analyzing the best parties, to identify ‘ideal data sets’ (sets of settings and recipes for each of the machines, the surrounding conditions) for a quality product.

The system of monitoring should made it possible to:

• Maintain batch IDs, to use it as a ‘key’ when searching and analyzing data
• Visualize the current position of a particular sponge party on the line with a “Ok” / “Not Ok” display.
• Log the work of each machine referenced to the batch ID
• Automatically calculate the frequency, pauses in the operation of machines , allocate ‘time windows’ of each batch on installations operating continuously and without identification systems, using data from previous machines (indirect party marking).
• Store data for a long time with the purpose of retrospective analysis. Allow data to be exported to generate required non-standard reports and conduct additional analysis.

System structure

Previously, the enterprise introduced monitoring systems for each of the local systems of this production line with a ‘sight’ for the future implementation of the tracking task. After including all the sites in the monitoring system, it became possible to implement the task of complete product tracking along the technological chain.

An example of tracking a sequence of bowls in a the dough preparation site

Radio frequency identification systems with RS-232 interface (connected via USB-converters and concentrator) were used to monitor the correct sequence of the bowl supply to the test mixer. In case of product spoiling and ‘skipping’ in the sequence, this situation is automatically registered and a kneading number associated with this concrete bowl will be sent to the test mixer’s report, together with the time of its preparation.

Reports on all local systems are written ‘in-stream’, due to the connection of all WebHMI modules to each other via the Modbus / TCP protocol, the necessary data together with the product is transmitted to the next links and back: for example, due to the coincidence of the time of unloading processes, the IDs of the bowls are transferred back to the batching system, the mixer stores the last batch unload number that is read by the WebHMI divider controller, and similarly, divider reports that run continuously are ‘clocked’ by the end-of-work signal from the previous system (dough mix area).

By connecting all the WebHMI modules to each other and thus forming a single infrastructure in the system, it is very easy to add and connect the necessary signals and equipment – the connection is made to the nearest convenient module (including the wireless IO-Node modules) and the signals are transmitted to the specified system .

Benefits

• Thanks to the communication capabilities of WebHMI and the ability to organize any functional connections between them, the modification of existing local monitoring systems and their introduction into the tracking system occurred quickly, with a minimum of installation efforts
• The mechanisms of scripts and events allowed to implement any necessary additional logic.
• The recording of plant operations increased the discipline and responsibility of staff.
• Analysis of data from the tracking system allowed to increase the efficiency of production by several percent.
• Data can be viewed by different employees, from different locations.