Author: Kelly Ye

Production procedures and formula values property How secure is the intellectual property of your products? Many degrees of automation exist in manufacturing plants, but they all have a common requirement– specifying the activities and the order in which they need to occur as well as the key setpoints such as materials, amounts, tolerances, temperatures, durations, Full Story

Cooking (thermal processing) is critically important for controlling the levels of foodborne pathogens in products. Cooking is an effective process for eliminating, or at least reducing to acceptable levels, any pathogenic bacteria that may be present in the products. Today thermal processing is applied to literally hundreds of types of manufacturing processes from hams to Full Story

Improving Product Quality Often the quantities of materials required to manufacture a product are specified by weight or by volume. Recipes and procedures are created to specify the activities that need to be performed and the number of materials required. The Setpoints for these quantities are set in the recipes based on the materials that Full Story

In the event of a recall can you find everything you need to know in an expeditious way. As per Wikipedia, “Traceability” is the capability to trace something. In some cases, it is interpreted as the ability to verify the history, location, or application of an item by means of documented recorded identification. In the Full Story

Process customers do not need to automate their equipment to start taking advantage of some of the important benefits that off-the-shelf automation products possess. Processes that are typically operated manually can benefit from automating their procedural execution, meaning that the activities that operator typically perform by following printed Standard Operating Procedures can be Specified, Enforced, Full Story

Manual weighing and dispensing tracked electronically. Automating the dosing of Minor and Micro ingredients is often cost-prohibitive. These tasks are often performed manually by operators that weigh the required materials then dose them to the required destination at the appropriate time. These procedures are typically guided by Paper Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) that are used Full Story

Automation Simplified Managing the reception of materials and its distribution throughout all the storage locations can be a daunting task. Automating this with off-the-shelf products simplifies tremendously the implementation of such a solution. Factory Talk Batch has a component called Material Manager that enables such implementation. This solution seamlessly integrates the reception of materials into the Plant Full Story

We can greatly benefit from understanding what others have done, standards encapsulate the current best approach as seen by an individual or team. For end-users, these automation standards can be defined by associations and range from homegrown to corporate-driven. The International Society of Automation (ISA) is well established by providing best practices from expert experiences Full Story