Overview

For over a century, the SA Brewing Company has embedded itself into the cultural and economic heritage of South Australia. Famous throughout Australia, its best known products include brands such as West End and Southwark.

Until 2004, the bottling hall operation comprised two separate lines for packaging different products. This meant there was no midway cross-over between the lines. Products on one line requiring a packaging stage on the alternative line would need to complete both lines at least once.

Solution

SAGE Automation was contracted to design, install and commission a turnkey automation and control system to reduce the impact of product changeovers and improve overall production efficiency in the bottling hall. This included relocation and integration of existing equipment (each performing a stage of the process) and control of 90 new variable speed conveyors that transport bottles between processes and packaging stages at speeds of up to 1200 bottles per minute.

Result

The increased capabilities of SA Brewing are due to a number of factors. These factors include flexibility of product paths through the bottling hall (over 50 product routes and settings), the utilisation of proximity sensors to detect mass accumulation along the conveyor and automatic adjustment of conveyor speeds to optimise buffering. Immediate rectification of faults is also possible due to the advanced diagnostics and alarming inherent in the system design.

Efficiencies realised as a result of the project include:

• 60% - 100% improvement in line efficiency
• Same production volume in 2 shifts instead of 3
• Line speeds now ‘tuneable’ to achieve near theoretical V-curves
• Rapid product changeovers with product based line speed settings
• Bottle accumulation is now controllable, reducing waste
• ROI was approximately 2 years