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Tradition and innovation in perfect harmony
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Inventory Management Systems
- Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
Applicable Industries
- Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Quality Assurance
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Condition Monitoring
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
The Challenge
Mulino Marino, a family-run mill in northern Italy, recognized the need to increase its production to keep up with growing demand. The changes in consumer tastes and purchasing behavior in recent decades presented new challenges: How to be more attentive to market demands for more sustainability, traceability, and organics, as well as to increased requests for alternative multigrain and multi-seed flours, which required the development of new recipes, processes, and products. These challenges, coupled with a dearth of experience and expertise amongst the younger generation of workers, highlighted the need to incorporate new technologies. The company’s strong sustainability ethos and its concern for a depleted earth also drove it to invest in energy management solutions such as solar panels, with the rest of its energy requirements coming from other renewable sources.
About The Customer
For three generations, Mulino Marino has been a family-run business. It was founded in 1956 when Felice Marino purchased a small flour mill equipped for natural stone and roller grinding. The mill originally consisted of three water-powered millstones. In the ensuing years, it continued to evolve, increasingly taking the organic path and adding the processing of a myriad of specialty grains, cereals, and seeds such as spelt, rye, rice, and buckwheat, all of which require different grinding styles. Today, the company is certified 100% organic (EU regulation 2092/91), with a fully Italian supply chain and a highly automated production process while still paying careful attention to the preservation of traditions and the quality of its products.
The Solution
Mulino Marino turned to Euro Beta, Schneider Electric’s Alliance system integrator partner, to help it achieve its goals. Euro Beta has deployed a range of EcoStruxure for Food & Beverage solutions. A network of Modicon M340 PLCs with Harmony HMIs, Altivar variable speed drives, and Modicon MCM safety controllers are all interconnected on an Ethernet network. The various areas that make up the mill (wheat storage, sack packaging, flour mills, rolling mills, grain mixing, etc) have been automated so that each can be managed independently and/or centralized on the console. The recipe process for the various flours, for example, can now be managed automatically by setting the parameters from the operator HMI panels that use a Vijeo Designer graphic interface. And there is still more in the works, including the installation of EcoStruxure Machine SCADA Expert on the central PC console to improve data management from the various systems and, potentially, from SQL databases, new building solutions for the showroom, as well as the implementation of EcoStruxure Machine Advisor for production monitoring.
Operational Impact
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