Mar 3, 2020
A Global Program for Digital Transformation
Engineering Industries eXcellence has won an exciting bid to lead a global digitalization initiative to build and deliver a complete Digital Manufacturing solution to an industry titan in Food & Beverage. Leveraging the Siemens Opcenter portfolio, our team will implement an integrated solution that will automate and transform the customer’s manufacturing operations, covering Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Manufacturing Performance Monitoring (OEE & KPIs), Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Manufacturing Intelligence (MI), with the addition of Advanced Production Scheduling and Laboratory Information Management (LIMS) in the future roadmap.
About the Customer
The customer is a global supplier of food and beverage ingredients to industrial markets. The manufacturing leader specializes in turning raw materials such as corn, oats and tapioca into ingredients that add taste, texture and nutrients to food and beverages. As a major player in a market that is continuously evolving, the customer has always invested in innovation to realize new solutions for their customers and their customers' products. For that reason, the customer is committed to the continuous improvement of their own methodologies and processes in order to ensure that they are consistently manufacturing the highest-quality ingredients in the most cost-effective way for their customers.
A Vision for Smart Manufacturing
Last year, the customer defined a vision for the complete digitalization and standardization of their production processes across all of their global processing plants. To achieve this vision, they decided to leverage Siemens Opcenter, one of the most reliable and widely used technology architectures for Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) available today. The highly scalable platform delivers powerful capabilities and enables manufacturers to combine production efficiency with production quality and production visibility to optimize their processes and significantly reduce their time-to-market.
Engineering Industries eXcellence has been working with the Siemens MOM offering for as long as it has existed. We have built a global team of business, technical, implementation and integration specialists with a level of expertise in these products that our customers could not find anywhere else in the world. For that reason, the customer chose Engineering Industries eXcellence as the system integrator and technical expert to lead their ambitious initiative and make their vision for Smart Manufacturing a reality.
About the Project
For the first phase of this global initiative, our team will be focusing on the corn processing division of the customer’s U.S. business. These facilities are tasked to process fresh corn in order to produce a number of different ingredients for their customers, including starch, ethanol and animal feed. In order to enable the customer to monitor, synchronize, optimize and improve all the different aspects and activities taking place during manufacturing, our team will design and deploy an integrated multi-platform solution, including:
1. Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
Leveraging Siemens Opcenter Execution Process (SIMATIC IT UAPI) software, the foundation of the customer’s new solution will be a powerful and flexible MES that will enable the customer to monitor, control and manage all the activities, resources and work-in-progress (WIP) on the factory floor and across their enterprise during the execution of production. The system will provide complete visibility of the manufacturing process in real time, allowing the customer to track labor, equipment, materials levels, performance and quality from start to finish, from receiving incoming material to distributing the produced goods.
2. Manufacturing Performance Monitoring (OEE & KPIs)
Leveraging MindSphere and Mendix, integrated with Siemens' Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) monitoring and downtime management software, our solution will enable the customer to monitor the usage and performance of all their assets and equipment within their facilities. As a result, plant managers and operators will be able to ensure that they are optimizing resource utilization, minimizing the costs of energy and materials, and preventing (or if necessary, quickly addressing) bottlenecks and quality issues during production. Storing this information in the Cloud will help the customer leverage this data to run in-depth analyses and understand deeper production trends. Customized dashboards and reporting will enable different users at different levels of the organization to get the information they need to drive improvements in business and operational processes.
3. Manufacturing Intelligence (MI)
Leveraging Siemens Opcenter Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) software, our solution will also enable the customer’s stakeholders to integrate different sources of operational data, including from their ERP, MES and OEE systems, for the purpose of deeper analytics, reporting, visual summaries and the sharing of data between enterprise-level and plant-floor systems. MI will produce historical data to track past performance and outcomes and compare them to current or future needs. At the enterprise level, MI will enable the customer to benchmark and compare production runs or to predict various plant operations.
Engineering’s Advantage
Engineering Industries eXcellence is truly one of the longest-standing and most specialized partners of Siemens for their MOM offering, with a team of technical resources that know this product better than any anyone in the world. Our first MES projects with Siemens were implemented over 20 years ago. Over the years and as our team gained more experience deploying these solutions to customers of all shapes and sizes and across all industrial sectors, our methodology evolved in terms of being efficient, minimizing risks, delivering a better technical product, driving tangible ROI and providing the highest level of service to the customer. Combining our unique implementation methodology and technical strategy, we look forward to delivering a world-class solution and supporting this customer for many more years to come as they continue along their exciting and ambitious digital transformation journey.
Our Services
- Project Planning
- Program Management
- Software Design & Implementation
- Manufacturing System Integration
- Change Management
- Software Validation & Testing
- Manufacturing Software Training
- Software Maintenance & Support
