22 INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & DATA SYSTEMS 91,3

Carlsberg
Takes the
Bottleneck
out of
Bottling
Industrial Management & Data Systems. Vol. 91 No. 3, 1991, pp. 22-23.
MCB University Press Limited. 0263-5577
T
he efficiency of Carlsberg's bottling line
is the key to its productivity.
Copenhagen in Denmark is famous for many things, not
the least of which is the Carlsberg Brewery. The brewery
was founded by J.C. J acobsen who named it after his five-
year-old son, Carl. Brew No. 1 began on 10 November
1847 and in that first year 3,500 hectolitres of beer were
produced. Today, the same amount of beer is produced
in two hours and Carlsberg now ranks as one of the largest
breweries in Europe.
With so much beer to put into bottles, the efficiency of
Carlsberg's bottling line is the key to its productivity. At
their Copenhagen brewery there are three bottling halls,
each with a capacity of between 30 and 72,000 bottles
per hour, operational 24 hours a day. To achieve this kind
of throughput the lines have to be fully automated.
Carlsberg have been using Texas Instruments controllers
for a number of years. In the mid-1970s, controllers were
first used to replace relay control on the palletising and
depalletising stations. The increased reliability made the
new controllers particularly popular with the plant's
maintenance engineers and automation was extended until
the complete export bottling line had been automated with
14-15 controllers by 1982.
Carsten Elkjaer is head of the Electrical Maintenance
Department for the bottling halls and is responsible for
the purchase as well as the maintenance of the equipment
used. He said this about his choice of control equipment:
Our buying decision is influenced very much by feedback
from the electricians who have to work with the equipment.
We have 26 electricians working three shifts per day and
consider their opinions to be of great value. They like the
equipment that we already have installed because they find
it very user friendly.
In 1987 Carlsberg decided to modernise completely their
second bottling line and again Texas Instruments
programmable controllers were selected. This time the
500 series of controllers was chosen largely because of
the family's wide selection of intelligent I/O and proven
track record.
The changeover to the new equipment went smoothly and
the electricians welcomed the additional new features
provided by the 530C, in particular the Drum Timers which
are especially useful for implementing Cleaning-In-Place
(CIP) routines.
Custom Graphics
Operators monitor and control the new bottling line
through CVU 5000 operator interfaces. These are high
resolution 19-inch colour monitors with an industrially
hardened keyboard which help the operator visualise what
is happening on the high speed line. One of the major
advantages is the graphic mimics which can be modified
easily to cope with changes in the line configuration, a
big change from the engraved control panels that were
used previously.
The first CVU was used in the carton-packing facility. A
second was then installed on the bottle washer, a huge
machine with a throughput of some 60-70 thousand bottles
per hour. Before installing the CVU 5000, the operators
had no idea of what went on inside the machine but now
with 20 different mimic displays, they can see what is
happening. It has been a great success and proved very
popular with the operators.
Said Mr Elkjaer:
The graphics editor is so easy-to-use; we found that our
people were able to construct a new mimic display in just
one morning. We are now considering linking two CVUs to
our beer supply systems and will be looking at the new CVU
6000 very closely.
CARLSBERG TAKES THE BOTTLENECK OUT OF BOTTL ING 2 3
530T Fixes a Bottleneck
Once the new line was up and running, it became apparent
that there was a problem in the bottle filling unit where
48,000 bottles per hour needed to be filled. The trouble
lay in the bottle filling cycle time which was in fact much
faster than specified by the machine builder, and the 530C
controlling the machine had not been programmed to cope
with this. Mr Elkjaer takes up the story:
At this time the 530T PLC was about to be released and we
talked TI into letting us have the first one in Europe. The 530T
is completely programand hardware compatible with the 530C
but has a scan time of less than a millisecond per K of memory.
The higher scan time enabled the new controller to cope easily
with the unexpected filling speed of the new machine.
Today the filling installation and CIP are implemented on
the same 530T but Carlsberg are already looking at
dedicating a separate 530C to the non-time-critical CIP
function. In addition, two new 530Ts will be used on the
pressureless combiner, a further two for a new fully
automatic label station, and a 530C is planned to control
the low pressure cleaning system for the conveyors. The
bottling plant has 10-15,000 I/O points with about 1,000 on
the filling installation alone.
High Reliability and Effective Debugging
Reduces Downtime
For a large continuous production operation like this,
equipment downtime is very costly and must be kept to
a minimum by using reliable controllers with efficient fault
diagnosis facilities. On this subject Mr Elkjaer commented:
In our choice of control system, the main criteria were price
and quality, then user friendliness and how effective the
debugging facilities were. Every minute the bottling line is
down cost us a lot of money, therefore an efficient fault
diagnosis system is essential. We must have equipment that
our own people can work with effectively.
We were influenced by the high reliability of the 5TI system
and when TI expanded its PLC range with the 525, 530 and
565 machines we were pleased to see that once again they
had products which could satisfy our criteria such as the Drum
Timers.
These are especially useful for implementing CIP routines.
In a bottling installation this operation is of paramount
importance because beer is a living product containing
various bacteria until they are killed by pasteurising.
A one-week training period on the software was given by a
Danish software house and thereafter the electricians
gained experience during the installation and start-up
phases. The bottling line was started up by the Carlsberg
electricians working together with the machinery suppliers
and during this period everyone concerned became familiar
with the PLCs. At this time Carlsberg started using the
IBM PCs as programming tools but thanks to TISOFT the
operational differences were transparent to the electricians.
Mr Elkjaer talked about future plans:
.. .we are thinking of putting the non-time-critical CIP on its
own dedicated 530C and then perhaps we will be able to
improve upon our present speed of 50,000 bottles per hour.
We have five more 530Cs currentiy on order. Two are for. the
new pressureless combiner, a further two for a new fully-
automatic label station and one more to control the low
pressure cleaning system for the conveyors.
As mentioned above, the bottling plant has 10-15,000 I/O
points with about 1,000 on the filling installation alone. Most
of the I/O is digital with only 1 per cent analogue used
for temperature control in the bottle washer and the
pasteuriser. This is in direct contrast to the brewhouse
where most of the I/O is analogue.
Controller Performs Data Acquisition
For two of the bottling halls, data acquisition systems using
the 565 controllers have been implemented. The 565s treat
the 530 units merely as data outputs, logging data as and
when it is transmitted. This is effectively a parallel system
offering a high degree of data security. Carlsberg is still
reluctant to use a serial line because a previous attempt
at this was unsuccessful due to noise problems.
The data in the 565s are automatically transferred every
minute to a buffer system comprising an IBM PC. Then,
every 5 minutes the IBM PC downloads these data to the
brewery mainframe. Data only 5 minutes old concerning
the bottling operation are thus available all over the brewery.
Should a problem arise in the IBM PC, the 565s can store
data for the complete bottling operation for up to 24 hours.