Blommer Chocolate Enterprise Integration
As part of a production line upgrade, Blommer Chocolate wanted to deploy a fully integrated Enterprise solution. Corso Systems’ goal was to integrate many of the disparate systems into a single user interface to run the entire manufacturing operation. This included Customer Orders, Production Scheduling, Warehouse Management, Just-In-Time raw material delivery, recipe management, batch tracking, OEE, process analytics, LIMS, and a full shipping suite including bill of lading generation and truck monitoring. The glue holding everything together would be Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform. The original data sources for all of the individual systems would stay the same, but Ignition would replicate or optimize the functionality everyone needed to do their jobs.
Enterprise Integration Solution
Inductive Automation’s Ignition SCADA Platform
Sepasoft’s MES Modules
Microsoft Dynamics
Visiship
Custom Internally Developed iOS Batch and Recipe Management app
DSX scheduling software
Enterprise Integration Summary
Corso Systems worked with the subject matter experts for each portion of the Blommer Chocolate’s manufacturing operation. We started with customer service who took orders for their products to understand what the sales process looked like. Customer service could influence the production schedule for particular customers, so we needed a way for them to flag emergency orders for the schedulers.
Next, we met with the scheduling team to understand their system for generating the production schedule. The group collectively agreed upon a set of rules they would us to build the schedule. These rules accounted for product testing requirements, time spent on the line producing the product, and shipping dates. Throughout any given day or week they might move items on the schedule, so they needed a way to alert operators—and we built that directly into the Ignition client.
Before the operators were ready to start a batch, the shift supervisor would use the application to ensure raw materials for the next batch were ready to go at the line, otherwise they could override the schedule if necessary. This change would alert the schedulers as well.
Once the operators were ready to start the batch and had the raw materials, they would select the batch and recipe. Then, they were given step by step instructions for each batch. As the ingredients were added, the batch tracking system was automatically updated. The schedule was updated when the batch had moved through the process bottleneck the schedulers worked around.
For each operation of the process, Sepasoft’s Track and Trace module was used to build a full picture of what went into each batch, simplifying the process of meeting regulatory data collection requirements.
Once the product was in the shipping tanks, we integrated with the LIMS system to alert the shipping department and customer service to schedule trucks to pick up the product, generate bills of lading, and manage getting the product from the storage tanks to the trucks.
As part of this integration, we also implemented analytics tracking for each operation giving their process engineers data to determine where maintenance was required, and so they could find ways to optimize the overall process.
Results
Blommer Chocolate was able to better optimize their overall manufacturing operation using a single application to manage every aspect of making chocolate.
This project was a great example of IT/OT convergence and the digitalization of manufacturing. It required working with IT to gain access to all of the required databases and codebases. As with many projects that upend how a company operates, it also required pulling together many different stakeholders to facilitate a culture shift across the organization.
Blommer Chocolate was ready for the shift, so it was easy to get everyone on the same page, leading the way to a transformational tool to bring them into the modern age.
