Carlton and United Breweries selects DeltaV and PlantWeb
architecture for big plant flexibility, performance benefits
Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) is Australia's leading
brewer, producing more than half the country's beer. Despite
CUB's market dominance, it faces more pressure from boutique
brands, and sophisticated consumers who now demand more variety
than ever before. CUB has eight packaging lines, often running
24 hours a day.
Matthew Anderson, plant manager of CUB's Abbotsford Brewery
in Melbourne, "We just couldn't manage the number of
brands we were being asked to make. So we had to increase
our plant flexibility both from a technological point of view,
(and) we also had to make our people more efficient and flexible
as well."
To retain its competitive edge, CUB replaced the control
system for the filtration room -- the plant's nerve center
-- in the Abbotsford Brewery. The new system centers on Emerson Process Management's
PlantWeb architecture, including the DeltaV scalable automation
system, digital valve controllers, pressure, temperature,
conductivity and flow measurement instrumentation.
Rob Glastonbury, project manager for CUB's "Project
Delta" says he'd been waiting for years for a fieldbus
solution to be available. He was convinced Emerson's
PlantWeb architecture was a viable and deliverable option.
Glastonbury supports the DeltaV and PlantWeb choice because
he believes it supports long term financial and technical
goals while at the same time taking people into account.
The DeltaV system's "built for batch" flexibility
enables CUB to alter its production and adapt to specific
market demands with the flick of a switch. The system's advanced
diagnostics and Asset Management (AMSinside) enables the company
to pinpoint technical problems as they occur in the production
process, without a costly plant shutdown and unnecessary maintenance.
Says Glastonbury, "If we had major breakdowns in the
past, we had to shut the whole plant down. With this new system,
we've got a window on what's actually happening in the plant
and we now feel we can get to problems before they are breakdowns."
Notes Anderson, "It enables the people operating the
plant to think about how to optimize the system and fix those
faults they have, rather than poke around in dark corners
and try and find out where the problem was."
Only months after the DeltaV system's installation, the results
are extraordinary. Anderson notes, "The early signs are
that it's delivering everything we could have hoped for. We've
seen increases in flexibility of our people, we've seen increases
in production performance and conformance, and we're certainly
expecting the whole project to deliver what we expected, perhaps
more."
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