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Increased Diagnostics, Digital Capabilities in Process Instrumentation

Looking for increased production efficiency despite labor shortages, food and beverage producers demand more from their pressure, flow, temperature, and level sensors.

Baumer’s ultra-compact PAC50 sensor measures conductivity in the smallest spaces and is designed for use in small production facilities.
Baumer’s ultra-compact PAC50 sensor measures conductivity in the smallest spaces and is designed for use in small production facilities.
Baumer

As food and beverage processors race to keep up with a constantly changing business environment, including rising prices, supply chain disruptions, severe worker shortages, and non-stop customer demands for new products and packaging, they are relying more than ever on their instrumentation to fill the gaps and provide new tools to improve operational controls.

Their primary goal, as it has been for many years, is to improve the quality and safety of their products and processes. Instrumentation suppliers have responded with new capabilities, chief among them the digital technologies that provide more information that companies can use to monitor and manage their production processes in real time. Catching problems early means less waste, less downtime, fewer product recalls, lower costs, and less damage to brand reputation and profits.

Filling the labor gaps

Labor shortages since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are one of the biggest drivers of this switch to digital technologies, according to Kristi Hobbs, director of marketing and product management for Anderson-Negele. “The increase in remote workers and the accelerated retirement of long-term plant employees that resulted from the pandemic are driving increased demand for remote access to plant operational information, as well as easier setup and configuration to minimize training time for new employees,” she explains. “This in turn has created additional change drivers, such as a desire to apply the benefits of cloud software technologies to processes to solve some of these problems, while also maintaining data security and preventing plant downtime.” 

Anderson-Negele’s Paperless Process Recorder lets quality managers review and approve process records online from anywhere at any time.Anderson-Negele’s Paperless Process Recorder lets quality managers review and approve process records online from anywhere at any time.Anderson-Negele

To help processors meet their objectives, Anderson-Negele has introduced a Paperless Process Recorder (PPR). Replacing standard paper chart recorders common in dairy processing facilities, the PPR provides an online workflow solution that enables quality managers to review and approve process records from anywhere at any time. “We’ve also added the IO-Link communication protocol to our sensor portfolio, which provides simplified integration and maintenance and increases the amount of available data from a sensor,” Hobbs says.


Read article   Read more about how the Paperless Process Recorder replaces cumbersome paper charts.

New sensors for new methods

The sensors now found throughout processing plants also help companies more easily adjust to new requirements. In addition to enabling further efficiency improvements over time-based or manual processes, sensors enable plants to address new processes that have different requirements than traditional practices, Hobbs notes. “In dairy, for example, the growth of higher-temperature pasteurization processes for milk and milk alternative products, which are more technically complex than traditional methods, is driving demand for more instrumentation and sensors,” she says.

Another way processors are countering the difficulty in attracting and retaining skilled workers is by adding in-line or at-line instrumentation to measure quality-related parameters and catch anomalies as early as possible, says Ola Wesstrom, food and beverage industry marketing manager at Endress+Hauser. These instruments help reduce hold time where lab sampling—a labor and time-intensive task—is required.

“In addition to operational efficiency and product loss reduction, advanced diagnostic tools can be utilized to identify root causes quickly,” he says. “For instance, analyses that used to require several hours of manual troubleshooting can now be done in minutes with these automated tools.”

Measuring more variables

Endress+Hauser’s Proline Promass I 300 is equipped with Heartbeat online verification and diagnostics and measures multiple process variables, including viscosity, mass flow, volumetric flow, and density-based concentrations.Endress+Hauser’s Proline Promass I 300 is equipped with Heartbeat online verification and diagnostics and measures multiple process variables, including viscosity, mass flow, volumetric flow, and density-based concentrations.Endress+HauserProcessors are also looking for instruments that can measure multiple process variables. “For example, a magnetic flowmeter can now provide conductivity and temperature measurements in addition to the volumetric and totalized flow values traditionally made available,” Wesstrom explains. “Monitoring of additional variables provides further indicators of operational efficiency. And while accuracy and repeatability have always been a concern, today’s instruments are usually several times more accurate than required by each process and can measure more variability in raw ingredients.”

The increased capabilities of new instruments makes them more valuable tools for processors, Wesstrom adds. “The advanced diagnostics and verification tool, Heartbeat Technology, built into many Endress+Hauser instruments today, empowers food processors to perform process monitoring, conduct predictive assessments, and reduce downtime, maintenance requirements and calibrations,” he says.

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