Success Stories

Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries 

Automating the changes at the Brewery

 

Wolverhampton and Dudley's Brewery in Wolverhampton was established in 1890.  The technology has changed but the beers and the brewers' yeast remain the same. As plant and machinery have been upgraded or replaced, W&DB has replaced virtually all their manual control of production.  The extensive automation supervisory and control system fully utilises Wonderware's InTouch SCADA and engineering expertise from Wonderware UK's Enterprise Support Group. The brewery at Wolverhampton is in the city, bounded by the ring road.

 

Therefore all changes to the site have to be carefully squeezed into the available space. The market for ales has decreased and for keg lagers has increased significantly in the last decade, thus changing the production demands. The site handles brewing, conditioning, keg filling and cask filling.  In addition to on-site brewing of their own-brand ales, lagers and ciders are brought in by tanker from other locations. With little room for stock holding, production has to be flexible.

 

The automation and supervision scheme at the brewery has developed through two generations of control and computer technologies. At the start of a programme that commenced several years ago, several objectives were agreed upon, these included a complete rationalisation of the various networks that had proliferated, a standard PLC type, and the use of Wonderware's SCADA product InTouch.  InTouch was to be used as the single user interface, encompassing operating, supervision and engineering fault-finding. All processes were also to be fully automatic. Having set their objectives high, due consideration had to be given to implementation, without stopping production, and designing the system with the Operators first in mind.

 

Business justification was based upon a belief that full automation (that is automatic control) would produce consistent quality and pinpoint any plant issues.  The inherent flexibility of SCADA-based user terminals would save money as the associated processes could be easily changed - especially when compared with hard-wired devices and the associated panel hole-cutting and wiring. The Brewery also realised that a single architecture based upon standard modules would save money in training, spare parts and efficiency.  Full automation of the processes would improve consistency and also reduce any accidental losses.

 

The first Wonderware InTouch node was added to the system in 1995, this was specifically to control the copper whirlpools used in brewing, and immediate confirmation of the justification was seen by the reduced commissioning time and the ability to tune the process through the SCADA keyboard. The full spectrum of the product was used with graphics, trending and a data archive that allowed events that occurred in the night shift to be viewed later. As the system was further deployed it was possible for the whole process to be automated, especially set-point information for differing batches at brew-change points.  This was seen to improve yield and consistency.

 

Cask handling involves racking, that is filling, after the casks have been cleaned. This is automated, without panel lights and switches, as is the whole plant CIP (Cleaning In Process) operation.

 

Given the long timescale of the programme, the very technology that has been deployed was subject to change, including Windows operating systems.  All PCs run with Cat5 Ethernet cabling to managed hubs, which are in turn connected by optical fibre. All networking on site is now Ethernet (previously a proliferation of vendor-specific networks had been used) with full use being made of the hub's SNMP capability to monitor hardware status remotely.

 

The production pressure was initially in the Kegging area, owing to increasing lager sales. The changes permitted a tripling in volumes filled per day, through being menu-driven rather than manually-set size and beer changes.

 

Throughout the programme the Process Operators under the guidance of the Head Brewer were encouraged to adopt and participate in the new SCADA interface. One third of them were involved in system testing - a challenging situation given their years of experience! They were shown SCADA at a different site, so that they would know where the programme was heading, and within a week they were taking great delight in debugging the system to provide an optimised working environment.  Operator acceptance was thereby achieved, the application taking fully six months to fine tune.  Such is the confidence now felt in the system that operators encountering problems print out the relevant computer screen on a colour printer.  This allows the evidence at that moment to be very efficiently captured.

 

Part way through the project, Senior Engineer, Colin Walton, determined that the network could be simplified, obsolete hardware replaced, with all application upgrades and modifications centralised and also reducing the number of potential single points of failure. This involved reducing the number of software packages and device drivers, ensuring that the record of no system downtime during production has been maintained.  At this time the Wonderware UK's Enterprise Support consultancy service was contacted, with the result that Dr Geoff Brown, Senior Consultant, was engaged on the project.

 

Geoff helped Colin to establish detailed requirements and ensure that the plant automation could be merged over the entire site, facilitating the move to full shift operation. Geoff advised Colin on the detailed options that were open to him and how to produce a rugged system covering two versions of InTouch, with enhanced diagnostics based upon Geoff's experience and expertise. This additionally included special routines for database merging and identifying any computer or PLC failure.  A password, mimic or database change can be deployed centrally within five minutes to all areas.

 

The resulting architecture involved two InTouch tag servers that gather all the PLC data and make it available to all InTouch nodes. The tag servers operate in dual-redundant mode and are physically positioned in different areas of the plant with UPS backing. This gives good protection for disasters and also allows the two parts of the plant to continue in production if the back-bone network is ever faulty.

 

Colin has supervised this programme for its complete duration. His single-minded determination to fully automate the plant with a standard, rationalised solution has allowed W&DB to respond very effectively to market changes. Colin has made sure that all employees were involved all the way along. He has installed a full SCADA node in both maintenance workshops, allowing reported problems to be accessed immediately. Colin also designs and configures new control schemes directly on the SCADA screens, finding that InTouch's legendary ease of use even applies to this stage. Documentation of all processes is made through the system and information for maintenance is available in a context-sensitive scheme.

 

The resulting system has stood the test of changing plant and market requirements; this has included staying in production whilst taking over the production of other parts of W&DB as changes were made to the company structure.

 

 

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