Food Processing

How does a food processing line engineering engagement work?

We build the layer beneath a food or beverage line, from instrument access up to the traceability stream.

It reaches from the instruments on the line up into MES and ERP: the protocol access interfaces, the recipe and batch data model above them, and the lot genealogy behind both. This is for MES vendors, machine builders and integrators delivering into a plant. You keep the product and the plant relationship; we take the parts that need a standing specialism:

• access interfaces to intake and in-process instruments over POWERLINK, PROFINET, CANopen, Modbus RTU and TCP and serial links
• OPC UA from the automation application and PLC, and the gateway that merges several machines into one subscribable view
• purpose-built nodes and gateways where no off-the-shelf part fits
• recipe and changeover logic moved out of PLC code into an ISA-88 batch model
• lot and batch capture at the station, with the genealogy model behind it
• inline inspection that feeds state back to actuators in real time
• training your engineers on the technology, building the first implementation with them, then third-line support behind their first line

The engagement page sets out the modes and how they are priced.

Why does the layer below an MES need separate engineering?

The two jobs are different: an MES owns the data model, the layer below it owns instrument access.

An MES vendor’s product is the data model and what the plant does with it, and it is the question we are asked most on a food line. Ours is everything below that: getting at the instruments and controllers in the first place, over whatever they actually speak, and presenting a merged, trustworthy stream upward. The machine builder owns the machine and its mechanical hygienic design; the integrator owns the plant-side delivery and commissioning.

Which slices of the work can you support?

Any one of the layers below the MES: instrument access, a merged view, recipe logic, traceability, inline inspection.

• An unreadable instrument. A weighing, feed, temperature, moisture or inspection device on a protocol the rest of the system does not speak, that has to appear upward as ordinary data.
• A merged view across machines. A gateway that lets a remote system request, subscribe to and receive live data from a group of machines without polling each one.
• A device to build. A purpose-built node or gateway built from the stack port and board bring-up upward.
• Recipe logic outgrowing its PLC. Hard-coded changeover and segregation logic migrated into an ISA-88 batch model, one product family at a time.
• Traceability for a recall. Lot capture at the station plus the genealogy model that resolves an ingredient lot forward to every pallet.
• Inline inspection at the station. Camera or sensor systems feeding state back to actuators fast enough to reject or correct the unit in place.
• Team bring-up. Your own engineers brought up to speed. Training, then building the first implementation alongside your team, with third-line support behind them afterwards.

What does the instrument and protocol layer cover?

It covers whatever the line already speaks, which on a real floor is four or five protocols at once.

Intake weighing and feed instruments, in-process temperature and moisture measurement, and inspection systems arrive on POWERLINK, PROFINET, CANopen, Modbus RTU or TCP, or a plain serial link, and the automation application and its PLC sit above them on OPC UA.

On one biscuit and confectionery line we built the access interfaces to the intake and in-process instruments, and the MES vendor drew process data across them and did the processing. Separately we built a central gateway so a remote ERP could request, subscribe to and receive live floor data from several machines alongside the processed MES data, carried over OPC UA on a VPN. The split was clean. The MES vendor owned the data model and we did everything below it.

That build also settled a protocol question. The customer’s existing MQTT leg was legacy and never fully functional, and OPC UA carried the ERP path instead. This is not a verdict on definitive protocol choice. The same is also done over MQTT, typically in North American industry as Sparkplug B, and it is a good fit where the payload is telemetry and the consumer is a cloud service. On this line the subscription model and the address space were already in OPC UA, so a second path had no job to do.

What does inline inspection add?

It lets the line act at the station instead of at the end of it.

Camera or sensor systems at the station feed state back to the actuators while the unit is still in place. As an example, on a moulded frozen confectionery line we built a line-scan camera system for an MES provider that monitors output state and feeds back in real time to actuators and quality systems: correctly formed, half filled, empty, stick missing. Inspection of that kind belongs where the unit is made, because the value is in rejecting or correcting it before more work goes into it.

Who specifies what has to survive the washdown?

We do, where it concerns the layer we design.

That means selecting the ingress rating for enclosures and connectors to IEC 60529, and to IP69K per ISO 20653 in the wet zone, and cabling rated for the wash chemistry and the thermal cycling, in place of standard industrial parts, then designing the electrical and network layer to meet it. We work to 3-A Sanitary Standards and EHEDG guidance where the equipment sits in that zone. Two boundaries sit around that:

• Hygienic mechanical design covers material finish, drainage angles and crevice-free construction. That is the machine builder’s discipline and it stays with them.
• Installation and on-site commissioning are the integrator’s. We supply the specification, the design and the compliance case, and their team puts it in.

Our own contribution is the electrical, network and embedded layer that has to survive the same environment and the same wash cycle.

How do you migrate a line to recipe-driven control without a controller swap?

In stages, one product family at a time.

Most lines already run some recipe logic hard-coded into PLC programs after years of successive changes. We move that logic into an ISA-88 batch and recipe model incrementally, validating each family against the running line before cutover, so a controller replacement is never a precondition for getting to data-driven recipes.

What data model sits behind ingredient-to-pallet traceability?

A parent-child lot genealogy, structured so it can trace forward and not only log backward.

The genealogy runs incoming ingredient lot to batch to pallet, held in the historian and keyed so a single ingredient lot resolves to every pallet it touched in minutes instead of a day of cross-referencing shift logs. Capture happens at each station in the background of the normal cycle, which is what keeps it off the operator’s hands and out of the line’s cycle time.

We build the capture and the model that makes the query answerable. Surfacing it to an operator, a quality release workflow or a production control application is the MES vendor’s product, and that division is the same one described further up this page.