As the global demand for food continues to grow, processors are increasingly turning to automation to help
them remain competitive and deliver safe, high-quality products. Maple Leaf Foods is recognized as an
industry leader in food processing with a long history of preparing delicious, healthy protein while
honouring a strong commitment to sustainability. As the world’s first carbon neutral food processor,
Maple Leaf has embraced automation at every level of their organization to help them drive efficiency and
quality. Their forward-thinking automation team continuously finds and tests the latest technologies
available and deploys those tools throughout the company. One critical piece of technology at the heart of
any operation is Production Monitoring and Maple Leaf’s latest implementation has helped them take that
monitoring to the next level.
Maple Leaf recently installed an added value line for further poultry processing (FPP) at one of their North
American facilities, along with incorporating system improvements on several existing lines in the same
facility. They recognized this as a great opportunity to implement a new Production Monitoring System.
The key requirements of a new system were providing comprehensive production history and shift
reporting while minimizing operator intervention all while ensuring a high degree of data integrity. After
investigating several options, Maple Leaf selected PLEX Mach2 as their Production Monitoring tool due to
its cloud-based application and interoperability with IIoT. The result was visibility on each piece of
equipment which enabled their team to understand when and why down-time had occurred.
To help manage the hardware and OT layer of this installation, Maple Leaf engaged Rockwell SI Partner;
RidgeTech Automation of Cambridge, Ontario. RidgeTech was responsible for coordinating between the
end user, the equipment OEM’s and Rockwell’s Plex Team to guarantee that the system was designed
accurately and reliably. The application had to ensure the correct data from every device at the plant floor
was captured and displayed in a complete and contextualized format at the corporate level. This included
delivering a robust server and network architecture that integrated with the existing plant infrastructure
and coordinating with the equipment OEM’s to ensure compatibility with various system architectures.
RidgeTech worked closely with both the end user and Rockwell Teams to ensure that data collected was
accurate, consistent and valuable. FactoryTalk View SE, AssetCentre, Kepware, ThinManager and FT
Historian Server were some of the key packages that allowed us to seamlessly gather and store data from
assets at the OT level.
Maple Leaf can now use this system to estimate product SKU batch runs and utilize historical data to
identify production events that previously caused down-time for FPP line products. This is a powerful tool
for operations to control scheduling and it assists with last minute process changes. Maintenance has
benefited from the event history and down-time logging. They are now better prepared for routine
preventative maintenance measures. Engineering and production have both benefited from the improved
metrics to OEE.
The final result is full visibility on each piece of equipment, a better understanding of throughput and the
elimination of unnecessary down-time. This PLEX system is used daily and the reporting will help the
stakeholders to forecast for future process improvements.
