With a market share of over 40%, Vöslauer is the most popular mineral water among Austrians. On peak days, the company bottles up to 2 million liters of beverages per day. An output that requires high plant availability. In 2015, Vöslauer generated a turnover of 98.1 million euros - the target for 2020 is 104 million euros. Continuous improvement processes are therefore the order of the day for the Lower Austrian company. "The more stable the running behavior of the individual machines, the more output," says Thomas Leitner, Production Manager at Vöslauer, explaining why he was looking for a transparency-creating production data acquisition solution for the production lines for which he is responsible in mid-2016. "I wanted an easy-to-use system that would log exactly how many faults occur in our systems and how long they last without a lot of electronics or intervention in the control system," he reveals.

The following two key figures were particularly important to him: The degree of utilization and the efficiency. The first was to provide information on how many hours a system could theoretically be used, minus all cleaning phases, and the second on how an unadorned target/actual comparison actually turns out in day-to-day production.

Only two data sources

A bottle counter placed in front of the reject system is used to determine the data, which was realized by combining a light barrier with a VersaMax I/O module from GE and a data logger.

© T&G Automation

Only two data sources were tapped into at Vöslauer to calculate these and some other measured variables: A bottle counter placed upstream of the reject system, which was implemented by combining a light barrier with a VersaMax I/O module from GE and a QuickPanel+ from GE as a data logger, and the SAP system. This makes it clear whether 0.5-liter or 1-liter bottles are being produced on a production line, which makes a considerable difference to the target output. Every pause during which no bottle passes the counter is precisely registered. If this lasts longer than ten minutes, it also appears in the events to be classified by the production staff.

"I want to know which machines are experiencing malfunctions - whether during the blowing of the blank, the filler, the labeler or the palletizer. I'm also interested to know whether an incident registered by the MES system is a technical or an organizational fault, and much more," explains the production manager.

Previously, all information on any plant downtimes was recorded manually and entered into various Excel sheets at the company's own discretion and in its own words. The problem with this: "We were unable to search for similar events because there were no standardized text templates," says Thomas Leitner, describing a shortcoming that has also been remedied with the introduction of Mepis Opex. Although Vöslauer employees are still free to comment on certain incidents in detail in an extra column, the most important parameters have now been predefined in the form of read-only drop-down lists. "This makes it very easy for the plant operators. At the end of their shift, all they have to do is enter Mepis and classify the displayed downtimes accordingly with just a few mouse clicks. Initially, for example, they have to differentiate between set-up, cleaning, organizational or technical malfunctions and then go into a little more depth, guided by the response options already provided. All in all, this procedure only takes a few minutes," says the production manager, explaining a solution that is now well received at all levels of the company.

Comprehensible data foundation

The MES solution Mepis Opex displays the performance and downtime data in various graphical representations.

© T&G Automation

The company management can view the current operational situation online at any time and from anywhere, as Mepis is a web-based reporting tool.

Above all, however, the tool helps in the daily meetings in which the technical department, the production management and the line managers of the four PET lines and one glass line sit down together to review the events of the last 24 hours. Tabular lists and graphical representations, which were generated with the help of Mepis, serve as a basis for discussion for a targeted behavioral analysis of the systems. "Now everyone has the same level of knowledge and it really doesn't take more than 30 to 40 minutes to go through the data for all five lines," says Thomas Leitner, pleased with a tool whose efficiency-enhancing effect was already noticeable after just a few months. One of the reasons for this is that exact time data is now recorded, which in the past was sometimes only estimated: The actual duration of downtimes, for example.

And the internal communication flow also works better now: for example, the team on the second shift can find out at the touch of a button if something didn't go quite as smoothly as originally planned on the first shift. Should the same problem occur again, they would already be forewarned and could therefore take countermeasures or react more quickly.

Another department that benefits enormously from the transparency created by Mepis is maintenance. They are now informed immediately and fully automatically about every technical fault and can immediately see which failures cause the greatest consequential damage. In this way, they can prioritize their intervention accordingly and, if necessary, order the required spare parts immediately. This means that the department is no longer dependent solely on verbal reports from colleagues.

Growing basis of trust

Every morning's interdepartmental meeting has an objectively comprehensible data basis that is no longer questioned by anyone and Thomas Leitner himself has now set up 'his MES system' so user-friendly that one click on 'Refresh' is enough to get all the information he needs: Clear effectiveness and degree of utilization diagrams, meaningful target/actual comparisons, signal colors that indicate 'achieved' or 'not achieved' at first glance and much more. "The basis of trust among colleagues is now completely different. Everything is transparent, everyone has the same level of information and now we really know where we are losing time or which machines and processes we can still optimize," says the Carinthian-born employee happily.

His expectations of receiving validated data that would provide him with more clarity about the current processes and any weak points were fulfilled by the project. The collaboration with T&G continues: they are currently working on a maintenance module with a direct link to the downtime entries in Mepis Opex.

Author:
Martin Toth is Business Development Leader Factory IT at T&G Automation.