www.molenbergnatie.com

Founded in 1867 and operating from Antwerp in Belgium with branches in Barcelona in Spain and also in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Molenbergnatie has grown into the world’s leading supply chain manager for coffee, cocoa and nuts.

Molenbergnatie offers a wide range of services, including but not limited to forwarding, processing, customs declaration, warehousing and distribution, and a complete logistical service package to its customers.

The application in the Antwerp plant that is highlighted here, consists of the intake, weighing and blending of primarily coffee beans from ship containers into the warehousing silos of Molenbergnatie. When the coffee is sold through trading, the beans leave the plant through trucks after a new cycle of weighing – sometimes also packaging in bags – on their way to coffee roaster companies.

Supply chain management of coffee beans integrated with WinCC at Molenbergnatie

Solution Partner

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Business ChallengeThe existing silo warehouse dated from the mid nineties and was controlled by 2 Siemens S5 PLC’s. A full revamping of the automation part was required.

The existing MES System (based on text terminals) was used for manual manage-ment of orders, stock inventory and semi- automatic basic control of the installation. There was only a basic data exchange with the S5-135U PLC’s. The production follow-up, traceability and order planning was printed out on paper and manually entered in MES by the operators.

A new global visualization system was required with automatic data exchange between the new automation part and the new Logistics System (LMS*) for ma-nagement, ensuring complete control and follow-up including full error diagnosis.

With this revamping project, Molenberg-natie wanted to reduce costs and optimize the flow of the goods – mainly coffee beans. Because of the diversity of products and the increasing demands of the market this new system had to be ready to double – even triple – the processing capacity in the future without substantial new invest-ments.

Technical ChallengeThe replacement of the old plc’s by the new Simatic S7-400 plc and its periphery had to be implemented without any pro-duction stop. This requirement gave the general contractor Cofely Fabricom very limited testing opportunities spread over several weekends.

The new visualization and SCADA system had to be fully integrated with the Logistics Management System (LMS) from Cofely Fabricom in one overall project.

The optimization demands in phase 1 of the project were:•Fulloperationoftheplantinautomatic

and/or in manual mode with protected access

•Fulltraceabilityofallproductmovements•Fullerrordiagnosiswithhistorical

traceability

•ProvideallnecessaryI/Oanddetectorsto detect and prevent production errors

•Implementvariable‘tail’timesfortheredlers to empty the silos

Molenbergnatie defined further extensions which had to be realized over several years and projects:•Fullyautomatethefillingoftheproductsin‘big-bags’

•Doubletheintakecapacitythrougha second and fully automated intake line with two new silos

•Replacethemanualqualitysamplingdone by the operators by automatic quality sampling including weighing and packaging of the samples

•Renewaloftheolddustexhaustion system

•PossibleintegrationwiththeERPsystemof Molenbergnatie

Configuration* Logistics Management System

Visibility in production: Simatic WinCC SCADA system

With the SCADA system Simatic WinCC, Siemens offers an innovative, scalable process-visualization system with nume-rous high-performance functions for monitoring automated processes. Whether in a single-user system or a distributed multi-user system with redundant servers, the system offers complete functionality for all industries and features optimum openness.

SolutionThe choice to replace the existing Simatic S5 PLC’s by 1 Simatic S7-417 CPU was fairly straightforward because a huge wiring cost was avoided through front adapter connectorsforreusingexistingS5I/Oonthe S7-400 PLC.

The first step was to test during 5-6 week-ends the new Step7 PLC program and the migrationofS5IO’stoET200M.Theexis-tingS5IOwaspluggedinona‘mobile’S7-400 test PLC. Connected through Profi-bus to the 8 weighing units, it was possible to test thoroughly all weighing cycles handled by the PLC. Each weekend after the tests, the original installation was re-stored and the weekly production could start without interruption on Monday morning.

Together with the general contractor Cofely Fabricom, Molenbergnatie has chosen for the Siemens SCADA system Simatic WinCC because of the easy connec-tiontotheS7-400PLC(TIAconcept),thevast diagnostics possibilities of WinCC and Step7 and the integrated SQL database. The logistic management of the complete system was done with a customized version of the Logistics Management System (LMS), developed internally at Cofely Fabricom.

The second step was to test the WinCC applicationlinkedtothe‘mobile’S7-400test PLC on-site during weekends. The new SCADA system con tained screens for easy and full operation of the plant in manual or automatic mode, screens with WinCC Alarm Controls and screens for controlling and modifying the times of the redlers to empty the silos.

The third step were the functional tests on-site with the WinCC - LMS interaction.

Finally the complete rebuild was done during 1 weekend and the next Monday morning the production environment started again without any interruption, nor disturbance.

Inthelaterphasesandprojectsrunningfrom 2009 until 2013, Cofely Fabricom implemented successfully the full automa-tionoftheouttakelineto‘big-bags’,in-stalled the second intake line, implemented the automatic quality sampling and re-newed the old dust exhaustion system.

Through all these projects and invest-ments, Molenbergnatie has been able to double the intake capacity and decrease the processing time of the coffee beans in this supply chain process. Closing the loop with the LMS system for order, stock and quality management without any operator interferences, allowed a further optimiza-tion of the logistics process and product quality.

More extensions including a WinCC upgra-de to version 7.2 with virtualization of the WinCC and the LMS server and client systems are to be expected in 2014.

Logistics Management screens: managment console LMS

Results at a glance

•ThemanualinputinLMSisreducedtoaminimum

•AllpaperloggingreplacedbyelectronicrecordsinLMS

•Automaticgenerationofclientfriendlymovementreports, with PDF export to central fileshare of Molenbergnatie

•Real-timedataexchangewithLMSsystem

•Increasedefficiencydoublingofthestorageintakecapacity

•Lesserrorsduetofullautomatedtraceabilityofproductmovements

•Fullautomatedqualitysampling

•Fullerrordiagnosticsandanalysis

•Automationconceptwithbestinclassflexibility

•TIAadvantages:1engineeringsystemforScadaandPLC

Information about the Siemens Solution Partner Program

Under the Siemens Solution Partner Automation and Power Distribution Program, we join forces with our Solution Partner. By merging our product and systems expertise with the application and industry knowledge of our partners, we have created a common basis for the fast, smooth and highly efficient implementation of your requirement – customized solutions for competitive advantage.

www.siemens.com/automation/solutionpartner

Cofely Fabricom

Vitshoekstraat 5 - Haven 1036B-2070 ZwijndrechtBelgiumtel.: +32 3 543 7137axel.deroeck@cofelyfabricom-gdfsuez.com

www.cofelyfabricom-gdfsuez.com

Sales Order•Branch:HarborLogistics•Applicationtypical:mixing,weighingand

transshipment of coffee beans•End-Customer:MolenbergnatieNV•GeneralContractor:CofelyFabricomNV•SystemIntegration:CofelyFabricomNV•Location:PortofAntwerp,Belgium

Project Roll-out•Kick-off:Q2.2009•Engineeringphase:Q3.2009•GoLive: - Q4, 2009 (phase 1) - Q2, 2012 (phase2 : automatic sampling for quality control) - Q4, 2013 (phase 3: new dust exhaustion)

1st point of contact •ArletteSente (Technology Manager Visualization) and RonnyVrijens(AccountManager), SiemensNV•AxelDeRoeck(AreaSalesManager), CofelyFabricomNV

TIA Product Inventory

PLC Controllers1 x S7-417 CPU with CP 443 communication card3 x ET 200 M 10 x ET 200 S Industrial NetworkIndustrialEthernetbetweenS7-417CPUandWinCCProfibus between S7-417 CPU and ET 200 M / ET 200 S

HMI software1xWinCCV7.0RT8Kserver2 x WinCC V 7.0 clients

LMS Product Inventory

LMS ServerMSSQLDatabaseandMSReportingengineCommunicationservicewithSiemensPLC(overOPC)Print server