Data Integration
International brewing company tasks RoviSys with creating a transparent data integration system across multiple North American brewery locations in less than three months.
A large, international brewing company with manufacturing facilities stretched across the U.S. and Canada partnered with RoviSys to improve data collection and standardization at all of its breweries. To do that, a team of RoviSys engineers was tasked with implementing a solution that would unify the global data stream and make it accessible to operators, supervisors, and executives across the full enterprise. The timeline for the project was only thirteen weeks.
The Problem
Company growth had led to a world of trouble.
In this case, it meant over 15 breweries, each rich with legacy processes and systems, all recording different data into different databases through the various HMI packages available at each plant.
With no consistent data record for the enterprise or even within a single brewery, information was difficult to access and made performance and quality analysis nearly impossible to perform.
The company would experience continued growth, but it needed a consistent, accessible data flow that covered the entire business.
Our Role
RoviSys' extensive experience with both food & beverage operations and data solutions, as well as established relationships with OSIsoft and Rockwell Automation made it a clear choice as a solution provider. Additionally, RoviSys offered a layerless MES concept that eliminates the need to insert additional cumbersome layers between enterprise and plant systems, which enabled this customer to capitalize on the resources and equipment already in place at each site.
Together, this proved to be exactly the right experience and expertise for the project. Most integrators lack the size and resources to tackle a task as complex and sprawling, but RoviSys was up to the task as an international SI with 600 engineers and 8 locations.
With a unified data collection strategy and infrastructure in place, this North American brewer was able to examine accurate, consistent productivity metrics for the first time. That insight provided immediate pay off.
The Solution
A team of 12 RoviSys engineers was assembled to use the configuration of the plant control systems to build a standard data collection strategy and implement historians within each brewery. In just 11 weeks—two weeks ahead of schedule—the team processed a total of 144 SCADA applications with 2.8 million tags, to create 700,000 PI tags and 450,000 AF elements. A data infrastructure was created that provided consistent data flow and transparency across the complete network of breweries.
The Result
With a unified data collection strategy and infrastructure in place, this North American brewer was able to examine accurate, consistent productivity metrics for the first time. That insight provided immediate pay off.
The company quickly identified inconsistencies among its breweries and detected previously unnoticed power and water usage irregularities that were affecting both productivity, efficiency, and cost at each site. Each 1% improvement resulted in millions of gallons of process water savings. Not only is this good for the environment, but the cost of providing clean water and then processing wastewater was reduced significantly while maintaining quality and growing production.