NorthWind develops custom historian utilizing Ignition’s Perspective Software saving Schwan’s thousands annually.
The Schwan’s Company is a leading provider of quality foods in the United States. With over 10 production facilities throughout the US, you can find their brands in the frozen food isle at your local grocery store. NorthWind has partnered with Schwan’s to provide automation solutions to four of their manufacturing facilities. These projects include ingredient delivery, mixing and batching dough, recipe management and alarming software, as well as data collection and reporting for their pizza production.
In 2020, Schwan’s replaced one of the fryers at an appetizer production facility. The new fryer came with updated technology including controls features and capabilities. Although there are many new features available, accessing and deciphering them proved difficult and thus, inaccessible to Schwan’s. As Schwan’s implemented the new fryer into production, they began to suspect they were wasting resources. At the time, the fryer temperature could not be tracked. Because of this, the fryers constantly ran at high temperatures. Steven Lim, Schwan’s Principal Project Engineer stated, “they were replacing oil daily which was not only a waste in itself, but they were spending 4hrs in sanitation to switchover.” At this point they reached out to NorthWind to investigate what data was available to be tracked from the new fryer and to put it in a format that was usable.
NorthWind began developing a solution that would give Schwan’s access to the information they needed in an easy-to-use format. The interface would give Schwan’s the functionality to access and analyze the fryer temperature data to make cost saving process changes. When the NorthWind Team began to develop the solution, they examined all aspects of the need.
- Monitor the fryer temperature and additional data points
- Remote access to fryer data
- Over 1000 PLC tags and the current software did not allow for PLC tag manipulation
- Remote access was not available with the current software
- Software available on the market did not easily achieve both needs
In developing a solution that would address all aspects of the issue, NorthWind presented Schwan’s with a plan to use Inductive Automation’s Perspective Software. This new tool would allow for visual customization with responsive design features meeting a need of Schwan’s to access the information from any device. Although this platform met the mobility needs, the software was still newly released. The historian provided with the software would not allow for the search and tracking of individual tags needed for this project. To provide the search, tracking, and trending features NorthWind’s Team would develop a custom interface. Schwan’s agreed to the plan presented and the team got started on development.
The first step on the development track was to sift through the thousands of tags available for tracking. This took collaboration between NorthWind, Schwan’s, and the fryer manufacturer.
Next, the NorthWind Team designed the interface that communicates between the Perspective software and the PLC to successfully track the fryer setpoints. Remote access to the interface was built in for easy data monitoring and management.
- Search, track, and trend tags
- Save custom trends
- Import individual tags
- Set alarm parameters
- Print reports
- Remote monitor fryer tags
The custom historian interface gave Schwan’s the functionality to access and analyze the fryer data. With the newly accessible information, Schwan’s can fluctuate the fryer temperatures to only run at high temperatures when needed for production, and to cool them down when not.
- Estimated savings of $100,000 annually on the cost of oil
- Reduced sanitation time by 3.5hrs per week
The cost savings realized by Schwan’s more than paid for the project in the first couple of months after the implementation. The historian not only provided the measurable benefits above, but according to Lim “an additional benefit is the ability to use the historian to troubleshoot the fryer itself.”
The Schwan’s Company continues to utilize the historian to analyze and optimize production. “NorthWind has been great to work with and we didn’t have to provide a lot of direction” says Lim on NorthWind and the project process.
NorthWind and Schwan’s continue to work together in partnership creating efficiency at every venture. At NorthWind, the goal with every project is to make your process as efficient as possible.
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