_How has the ThingWorx IIoT solution increased production effectiveness at Haarslev?

About the customer

Haarslev is the global market leader in designing, manufacturing, installing and servicing state-of-the-art process solutions for processing valuable by-products.
Haarslev employs more than 900 people globally with headquarters in Denmark and offices and production facilities on all continents. The company services customers across the globe and generated an order intake of EUR 215 million in 2021.

In a relentless pursuit to offer state-of-the-art solutions to their customers, Haarslev decided to follow the concept of Industry 4.0 and recently invested heavily in developing customer-oriented digital solutions. This strategic decision led Haarslev to cooperate with Transition Technologies PSC, which was responsible for the implementation of the SCPA solution launched on the ThingWorx platform by PTC.

Project Background

Rockwell Automation invited TT PSC as a global IT solutions integrator to support the customer in analyzing business needs and finding the best solution. The joint meetings and workshops helped define the customer’s key business challenges, which became the determinant for selecting an effective solution.

After defining Haarslev’s needs and challenges, it turned out that the customer needed a dedicated space, through which any of Haarslev’s clients could check the current status of production lines (live data) and historical data. For this reason, it was decided to create a new reporting system that should address key KPIs in the field of Quality, Energy Consumption, Processing, and other Production KPIs, and provide up-to-date information regardless of the client’s business area (poultry, meat processing, fish).

Business challenges and needs

Haarslev, together with TT PSC and Rockwell Automation, defined the key business needs and challenges, which were:

• Offer Haarslev’s customer a solution that allows them to monitor production processes and efficiencies from anywhere in the world
• Develop reporting dashboard to allow customer stakeholders across organizational levels to interpret the data and take appropriate actions rapidly.
• Built the solution on a scalable Industrial IoT platform to support further development
• Ensure highest level of IT security and data protection customers utilizing the solution

It should also be mentioned that Haarslev has sophisticated and unique manufacturing processes in which different types of machines with different types of plc controllers and communication protocols had to be connected to one platform.

Data processed from machines and lines needed to be accessible from different parts of the world, stored on a single platform for easy access by authorized customers, and presented in a clear and understandable way. The data also had to be standardized to create software templates and ensure quick and easy configuration in case any new machines or customers needed to be added to the system.

Additionally, it should be added that each customer works with a different configuration of production shift and in different time zones. Therefore, the solution was required to ensure that the correct data was displayed, taking into account the time zone of the production plants.

Solution

The new reporting platform delivered by TT PSC provides real-time and historical information from production processes and makes the data analysis process more efficient.

The developed solution provides Haarslev Industries’s customers  reliable and consistent reporting of key metrics and KPIs, allowing them to:

• Spot real-time bottlenecks in a line or production area
• Improve the ability to make informed and data-driven decisions
• Maintain clear oversight of their rendering operations to easier define, measure, and implement continuous improvement objectives
• Compare production efficiencies across different production sites and lines over different time horizons

The new reporting platform is based on ThingWorx (located on the PTC Cloud) with the SCPA add-on. All data is available on a single platform, which provides easy access for authorized employees and minimizes the time needed to search for the information needed.

Also, the platform can be easily scaled, so it’s possible to add new machines and customers to the platform in the future. The security of the data is very important, as each customer has access only to their own data.

Business impact

The first pilot of the new IIoT platform has been delivered and released with very satisfactory results and will be upgraded with new features in the future. For this reason, TT PSC will continue to support Haarslev in planning and implementing product development.

The next step in the project is to gather feedback from the shop floor/operators and customers on the already developed solution. Based on this feedback, a new Product Roadmap will be built.

The new shared data space has become a solution that meets the needs of Haarslev and Haarslev’s customers. The advantage of having all data on one platform is the fact that it reduces the time needed to search and check information. This makes it easier for both parties to access the most important KPIs, monitor them in real-time and compare these data with historical data. This – in turn- helps simplify the complexity of existing production processes and saves time and money.