Woodlands Dairy cuts water cost and raw material usage thanks to real-time intelligence
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Goals
- A new reporting system that could be easily configured by in-house personnel, keep up with changing needs, work with existing assets and provide e-mail and web-based reporting capabilities
Challenges
- Grouping reports in PDF format (currently being addressed)
- Some technical issues with setting up the SMTP server and double counts
Results
- Aggregated, time-based plant and production data are available in real time
- Improved production planning
- Identification of deviations from norms
- Highlighting the excessive use of utilities
- Improved production efficiency
Solutions & Products

Implementation
“After getting the report requirements of all stakeholders, a Proof of Concept was conducted by Wonderware and the best candidate for the job turned out to be Flow Software,” says Kreesan Coopasamy, Automation Engineer at Woodlands Dairy. “It integrated seamlessly with our existing Wonderware-based infrastructure with its ArchestrA-like plant model. Its capability of aggregating measurements over any time period, provision for manual data entry, versatile report templates and ability to address all our other requirements made it the obvious choice.”
Flow was designed for easy access to multiple data sources, collation and aggregation of that data and the reporting of cross-referenced information to provide informed decision support at all levels of the organisation. “It certainly delivered what it said on the tin because it took us under two months to go live with the required reports and two weeks to verify that the information could be released to all users,” says Coopasamy. On completion of the project, the Flow server was handed over to the IT manager in order to ensure secure operation within the Woodlands Dairy IT network infrastructure.”
The reports started giving the Woodlands production team the decision-support information they needed the minute they were released. The all-important opening stock report, for example, e-mailed at 06:00 every morning, provided an accurate view of the previous day’s stockholding as well as the current supply situation which allowed production runs to be planned accordingly. “In this business, production runs change on a daily basis and according to the yield of the cows that morning,” explains Coopasamy. “That’s why we need accurate, real-time information so that not only the milk but the powder, butter and cheese lines can also be optimised.”

Benefits
- Plant and production data are available to share with management in real time or aggregated over any specified time period
- Improved production planning using process machine utilisation graphs.
- Identification of deviations from norms established by using real and accurate data – “Abnormalities are easy to detect once you know what ‘normal’ is,” says Coopasamy
- Highlighting the excessive use of utilities
- Improved production efficiency