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SAGE's National Operations Centre provides remote response and fault diagnostics for a regional winemaker, getting operations back online without the need for travel.

Industry

Manufacturing: Food & Beverage

Outcome

National Operations Centre provides remote support and resolution during an outage, helping to minimise downtime for a regional winemaker.

Capability

Remote access support, control system fault resolution, PLC recovery, remote monitoring.

Region

Mildura, Victoria, Australia

Director Melbourne Airport

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Challenge

Qualia Wines is the sixth-largest winemaker in Australia, growing more than 13 varieties of grapes and crushing more than 60,000 tonnes per year.

Located more than four hours’ drive from Adelaide and five-and-a-half hours from Melbourne has previously meant outages can take several hours to rectify. When these outages occurred in the past, Qualia Wines suffered downtime and incurred additional costs while waiting for technicians to travel to the site and correct the issue.

In February 2019, a suspected power surge or lightning strike caused an outage that shut down the entire operation.

Solution

Technicians based in SAGE Automation’s National Operations Centre (NOC) were able to remotely resolve communication and PLC faults occurring from the outage.

The NOC allows for a Senior Control System Technician to remotely access Qualia Wines’ SCADA system to recover the PLC and correct the errors in the communication system. Winery staff on-ground were able to speak directly with a control system expert as the issue was being corrected as well, allowing them to be given regular status updates on the process of the fault-finding. 

Through the NOC, fault diagnostics can be done immediately from the Adelaide office, reducing the time taken to identify and correct the issue in the winery grounds.  

Rather than facing a minimum of five hours downtime, staff in the NOC were notified of the outage and began working to resolve it within minutes.

Outcome

Qualia Wines operations were back up and running within four hours.  

Through remote access, a Senior Control System Technician in the NOC connected to the site network and worked to resolve communication issues.   

“Remote access eliminates the need to dispatch a technician to site in most cases, greatly improving response times, reducing downtime and travel costs,” SAGE’s national asset operations manager, Chris Muir, said.

The NOC also allows for ongoing fast remote response of Qualia Wines operational systems, reducing the downtime and costs involved in resolving breakdowns.

A number of SAGE clients already benefit from remote monitoring services. In 2016, technicians in the NOC were able to assist Yarra Valley Water during a major power outage, monitoring multiple sites and restoring communications.

Read how SAGE worked to quickly get the sites back up and running and helped the client to avoid fines in the process.     

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