Gobbi Frattini

Real-time monitoring of a turkey processing and packaging plant

The Challenge

Gobbi Frattini is a rapidly expanding company that has been operating for many years in the breeding and processing of white meat located in Desenzano del Garda.

Gobbi Frattini's need is to interconnect the entire plant and the numerous electric panels of a new facility with a surface area of over 11 thousand square meters, on three levels and with a maximum height of over 10 meters. The structure is used for the processing and packaging of turkeys, which the company itself takes care of along the entire supply chain.

The objective is to be able to monitor in real-time the entire state of the plant and have traceability of food products to ensure the highest quality to consumers.

Gobbi Frattini products

The first challenge, due to the food sector and the very restrictive standards, concerns the maintenance of the cold chain along the entire product processing line. For this reason, temperatures can never fall below a certain threshold, and Gobbi Frattini needs to receive timely communications in case of problems and to have a system to display the alarms of the whole plant from each of the workstations.

In addition to the data of the machinery and the temperatures of the cold rooms of the processing areas, it is necessary to check every single switch of the almost 20 electrical panels, to know the energy production of the installed photovoltaic system and the water flow of the purifier.

The second challenge for TOOLS for SMART MINDS is to optimally manage the large number of elements to be controlled and the large amount of data physically distributed in a large plant, transforming them into information that can be consulted quickly and easily for each step of production and by date.

Solution

To meet Gobbi Frattini's needs, a solution has been implemented that is able to constantly monitor the entire plant, to show alarms allowing easy management, to allow product traceability and to quickly access the necessary information. The plant has been fully interconnected by detecting all the available electrical signals, with a suitable network system that TOOLS for SMART MINDS helped in the choice of some devices.
The solution is mainly composed by Digital Factory 4.0 Kernel that manages five iDaq, a software developed by TOOLS for SMART MINDS.

Digital Factory 4.0 Kernel is the core of the Digital Factory 4.0 Suite, a set of tools for SMEs that want to use process and production data, drawing useful information to improve productivity and product quality.

It allows to reach the necessary standards to remain competitive and have a solid base for implementations of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithms.

iDaq is the solution able to collect data from very heterogeneous machines and to manage them in a similar way, in order to be displayed in the same interface of Digital Factory 4.0.

The main plant of Gobbi Frattini

The monitored systems and the main data collected are the following.

• Two thermoforming packaging machines: the main alarms are acquired through Siemens protocol.
• Conveyor belts inside the plant: data on belt movement are acquired through Siemens protocol.
• Cutting line: the alarms are mainly acquired.
• Central refrigeration system: the temperatures are monitored and saved, the data are collected through Siemens protocol.
• Photovoltaic system: the quantity of energy produced by the panels is acquired and used by the system itself through Modbus protocol.
• Central fire detection unit: the status of all the fire sensors of the system is read through Modbus protocol.
• Pair of fire-fighting motor pumps: the status and all the anomalies reported by the control unit on the two pumps as well as any operating activity - via Modbus protocol - are checked.
• Purifier: the quantity of water filtered by Siemens protocol is measured and read.
• Ossobuchi machine: the machine alarms are read via Siemens protocol.
• Approximately 20 electric panels: the position of each individual switch is read: if it is closed, opened manually or triggered automatically - via Modbus protocol.
• Electrical generator set of emergency generators: the status and operation information as well as any generated power and fuel level status are acquired - via Modbus protocol.

Digital Factory 4.0 Kernel has two main tasks. The first is to save on a database the temperatures to ensure through the historical archive that food products have always been stored at the right temperature.

The data are easily retrievable and viewable by day from the Digital Factory 4.0 Frontend, allowing to have traceability and a guarantee for health checks and for the final consumer.

The second task of Digital Factory 4.0 Kernel is the continuous monitoring of all signals to verify that the value remains within the norm. If this is not the case, such as a tripped switch or a temperature out of range, Kernel immediately notifies the anomalies via email to the production managers and activates an automatic phone dialer to make automatic calls.

In addition, several Digital Factory 4.0 Alarms panels have been installed that allow to see all the alarms of the system from each workstation showing the relevant information.

Thanks to Digital Factory 4.0 Alarms, the staff in charge of resolving alarms can mark notes and comments on ongoing alarms to keep a company's knowledge, as well as mark the taking charge of alarms by improving coordination and optimizing their management.

The solution permits to configure the alarms autonomously, inserting new ones or modifying the existing ones, setting the anomalous values, and the notification mode in Digital Factory 4.0 for each one.

Benefits and Results

Thanks to the solution provided all the objectives have been achieved, and Gobbi Frattini has obtained the following benefits:

• Interconnection of the entire plant and company digitization: all available data is collected automatically, allowing it to obtain all the benefits associated with digitization: time savings, process optimization and increased productivity.
• Real-time monitoring: all values are constantly monitored to ensure that they remain within set ranges.
• Optimal display and management of alarms: alarms throughout the plant can be seen from each workstation and for each one it is possible to mark their taking charge, resolution, mark notes, and add documents or multimedia files in order to have a history of them and company knowledge. The solution permits to solve in a timely manner any problem that may arise, an important need in the food sector to ensure the quality of products.
• Traceability of the products: thanks to the collection of temperatures it is possible to guarantee for each package that the production requirements have been met.
• Information recovery in a simple and fast way: information can be recovered in a few clicks for each day.
• Reduction of paper documentation and human errors: data is transferred automatically avoiding errors due to manual transcriptions and reducing printing costs.

Potentiality

The solution provided is extremely flexible, allowing Gobbi Frattini to change machining operations and to connect new machinery as the plant is expanded.

Among the future developments, a siren fully managed by Digital Factory 4.0 Kernel can be connected to warn about certain types of alarms.

The solution provided also allows Gobbi Frattini to implement in the future machine learning algorithms and Artificial Intelligence for preventive maintenance.

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