PACE magazine s Zenith Awards program

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1 PACE ZENITH AWARDS 2009 Search for Australia s best The sixth annual PACE Zenith Awards is hotting up with a slew of top-notch engineering projects battling it out for the top spot. Sarah Falson writes. PACE magazine s Zenith Awards program hascomeinleapsandboundssinceitfirst appeared on our work calendars back in Not only has the former breakfast event migrated to a dinner/awards ceremony, but since its inception the competition has also grown year-on-year, making 2009 the largest event ever. The Zenith Awards was designed to publicly-recognise acompanies that show leadership in engineering in nine industries, including companies that design innovations from which the rest of the industry can benefit. Some may argue that the process and control engineering sector doesn t move very fast. Projects are large and the companies implementing them must often forkout truckloads of cash to upgrade even the smallest spare part or widget. When we start talking about industrialgrade or mission critical components or software systems, the sky is the limit. Add to this the global financial crisis and some might be wondering how the industry could survive at all especially since many of the processes we use today are still based on the tried and tested frameworks of our forbearers. But process control and automation suppliers essentially sit behind the scenes and support the public endeavours of larger manufacturers, water treatment plants and power generation stations that attract media attention. Ask any business involved in the sector and its decisionmakers will tell you that it is the top-secret processes and machinery which make the end product special not its brand or the number of Formula 1 races it sponsors. PACE magazine would like to congratulate you our readers on your fine efforts in the sector this year. The projects entered into this year s awards program have truly made a mark on the scene. To reflect this, we have upgraded the number of awards categories to nine, with more companies than ever showing interest, which is a testament to the hard-working nature of our industry. We would also like to thank our sponsors, without which the 2009: More companies than ever entered their projects. Zenith Awards could not exist. Please think of their efforts when perusing the following pages displaying the best the industry has to offer our PACE Zenith Awards Finalists for 2009, with the Project of the Year Award to be selected from among these nine categories. Good luck! PACE Zenith Awards MAY

2 PACE ZENITH AWARDS 2009 FINALISTS Food & Beverage FINALISTS RVO Enterprises Pty Ltd RVO CIPIS Inverter Station System Kingsgrove, NSW Testo Pty Ltd Testo Saveris Northmead, NSW Foodmach Australia Robomatrix Hybrid Echuca, VIC PRECISION: The RVO inverter station in action. AN Australian company committed to providing the global food manufacturing sector with advanced raw ingredient loading technologies is RVO Enterprises. Based in Sydney, the company has a long history of providing the sector with a range of advanced food production technologies. Designed to minimise ingredient handling and waste, the company developed an innovative rawingredient loading and delivery system, featuring drive technology from solutions provider, SEW- Eurodrive. The new food processing technology allows dry ingredients to be transferred from a collapsible intermediate bulk container (IBC) directly to the manufacturing process the collapsible IBC process integration system (CIPIS). The RVO Enterprises CIPIS system comprises two separate machines the RVO inverter station and the MATCON discharge station. The RVO inverter station s motion processes rely on precision electronic drive control and motor technology from SEW-Eurodrive. The inverter station features the latest in bulk materials handling systems, underpinned by precision pneumatic equipment and advanced motor and drive technologies. Compact by design, the inverter station enables the fast-track transfer of raw product from an IBC to a product-delivery hopper in even the most space-limited food manufacturing plant. According to RVO Enterprises, the development of the RVO CIPIS system was driven by lean manufacturing principles. More specifically, the inverter and loading stations were engineered to produce a complete loading system that minimises the seven sources of waste detailed in the lean manufacturing principles. These include over production, inventory, conveyance, correction, motion, processing and waiting. COCA Cola needed to improve its temperature and humidity monitoring processes during the maintenance and repair of vending machines, drink cabinets and chillers. Using portable thermometers, Coca Cola s staff would check temperature regularly in the facilities, however there was no monitoring system to record, print, and analyse the data. If the limit values were breached during testing, no alarm would be issued unless the breach was found by manual spot check, which was inefficient. Using the unique combination of radio and ethernet technology, Coco Cola was able to increase its process efficiency with the monitoring system testo Saveris, removing the need for manual recording. The testo Saveris is a wireless data measurement system which measures temperature and humidity at regular intervals. It utilises a Base station which can save 40,000 readings per measurement channel independent of the PC. This corresponds to around one year of memory capacity. Dickinson Autocon Systems Pty Ltd Weston Serial Industries, Mill Management & Control System Upgrade Enfield, NSW WESTON Milling is a leading Australian food product manufacturer. The Enfield site is undergoing an automation systems redevelopment program that will modernise the control system, removing existing legacy system risk and improving information management within the production environment. The site s existing control system (> 3000 I/O) had become difficult to maintain considering the limited number of PLC spares available not to mention the HP Monitrol SCADA system which was a single point of failure for the entire distribution operations. The site implemented a distributed range of controllers dispersed over six floors, along with a Microsoft SQL Server database which was used as the repository for all data/information repository requirements. As there was a need for distributed reporting, Microsoft Reporting Services was used. Citect s flexibility enabled this interface to be embedded within the SCADA project leading to an overall integrated look and feel to the solution. MOTORS: Relies on SEW-Eurodrive drives gear. FOODMACH Australia provides a range of patented robotic and automated packaging solutions. The company recently combined two of its automated packaging solutions to create a unique hybrid palletising machine the Robomatrix Hybrid. The new system combines features of Foodmach Australia s Robomatrix series of high-speed patternforming palletising solutions, along with elements of the company s S3000 floor-level case-palletising system. Almost all of the Robomatrix Hybrid s motion processes rely on SEW-Eurodrive electronic drive control, as well as SEW-Eurodrive standard and servo gear motors. The result is a fast and efficient single-level palletising machine, adaptable to nearly anything that comes off production in a package. The Robomatrix Hybrid features the latest in materials handling systems, underpinned by precision automation, and advanced robotic and drive technologies. Its robotic arm manipulates and orients finished packaged product into pallet layers. Each pallet layer is then hoisted and stacked from the ground up to form a pallet. The palletising machine has seen Foodmach Australia expand its extensive range of machinery. MAY

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