Cool and refreshing, milk is one of the world's most popular sources of calcium and other
vitamins.
Arla Foods is one of the largest dairy companies in Europe with 70 plants in Denmark, Sweden
and the United Kingdom.
The Arla Dairy in Christiansfeld, Denmark, supplies fresh milk products to one quarter
of the country's more than five million citizens.
Arla prides itself on delivering the freshest milk products on the market.
In fact, Arla Express milk goes from the cow to the grocery store shelf within only 12
hours.
This is a fresh milk dairy producing fresh drinking milk products for the southern part
of Denmark.
We make freshest possible milk, the Arla Express, which is a 12 hour concept from milking to
the shop.
We make a number of different products, organic milk is one of them, chocolate milk, different
varieties.
Arla decided to adopt a plant intelligence solution from Wonderware, a business unit
of Invencis that enables them to visualize, analyze and optimize the data from plant
floor processes and traceability of product genealogy from their production plants.
APV, another business unit from Invencis, was called in to provide a turnkey solution
that included the hardware, PLCs and Wonderware software and giving Arla the capability to
integrate all their plant systems into one system.
This corporate strategy became known as One Arla.
The One Arla approach has started two years ago, approximately, and the approach is that
all our systems has to be integrated in one system, which will make it easier for our
headquarter, ourselves, to follow up our business on daily basis, on weekly basis, on monthly
basis.
Another solution can support the SAP system with information about key PIs, for example,
key performance indicators, and that helps the headquarters, it helps us in the daily
business.
Arla first implemented Wonderware's in-touch HMI interface software as well as APV's hardware
solutions in 1998, when the dairy installed a new separation and pasteurization line to
produce organic milk.
The Wonderware software automated the Christiansfeld plant's 25-year-old system.
Two years later, the Plant Intelligence solution Arla selected includes the industrial SQL
server real-time plant historian, in-track resource tracking software, and DT analyst
asset monitoring software.
The new system provides full integration, traceability, and visibility into actionable
plant and equipment information used for equipment performance optimization and product and process
tracking to ensure the highest quality products.
Operators in the milk processing area also noticed a significant difference in the plant's
cleaning processes.
The old dairy systems at Arla were not automated.
There were PLCs, but no reporting and no traceability.
It was possible to overfill a tank and make other errors that lead to unnecessary waste.
And because the process was entirely manual, it took many hours of waiting through piles
of reports to retrieve important data.
Our quality is the basis.
We work with high quality, fresh, a little bit more expensive products than our competitors.
We want them to be superior to quality, superior to freshness.
So quality is superior to.
Each evening the raw milk arrives by truck from the farms.
It is then centrifuged and subjected to a pasteurization process that divides it into
cream and skim milk while removing potentially harmful bacteria.
The two fractions are then mixed in different ratios depending on which of more than 40
recipes are being produced.
The milk, now standardized, is HTST and homogenized.
Finally, it is packaged and trucked out to more than 850 different retail stores.
At each stage of production, critical information about the process must be tracked and recorded,
including temperature data from the pasteurization and flow data from the cleaning process.
Automating this data collection has helped in reducing the number of errors on the lines
and increased security in production.
This has had a significant impact on the amount of control managers have over the day-to-day
operation of the dairy.
Transability is mandatory and has been so for many years, but when you use a paper-based
system, it takes a lot of time.
You're slow in your response.
So in the case of a customer complaint in the old times, it would take hours and hours
to get the data to answer in a professional way.
So what we gain from getting the reporting facilities is fast reports that tells us what
happened, so we are able to answer quickly, to respond quickly if we actually did make
a mistake.
Well, it reduces the risk of having to recall a large amount because we have detailed information.
If we have a package where we can see what time it was produced, we can take the report
and say, okay, this was exactly what was going on at that point in time, and then perhaps
limits the recall if we had to go into recall stress.
With the addition of WonderWear's DT Analyst Asset Monitoring and overall equipment efficiency
or OEE, out-of-the-box software helps Arla drive machine efficiency improvements on the
plant floor.
By reading data on pasteurizing and cooling temperatures, WonderWear's Plant Intelligence
System helps assure the quality of the milk produced here at our plant.
Yes, plant intelligence is a very important part of our strategy.
We need to be competitive.
We need to improve all the time.
So knowing what's going on in the factory on the pasteurized floor, it's very important
for us to make good and right decisions.
I think that WonderWear's Plant Intelligence products are good products that support solutions
for the future.
Success in the turbulent and highly competitive consumer market is dependent on meeting stringent
quality demands in the most efficient way possible.
With a plant intelligence solution from WonderWear and APV, Arla is moving to the pinnacle
of this market.
