Scanspac

Scanspac

In Scanspac’s factory in Glanshammar outside Örebro, filler is manufactured for professional professional painters. Customers are found in all the Nordic countries and also in large parts of Europe. The factory produces approx. 34,900 tonnes of putty per year and the products are delivered in everything from sacks, small tubes to 15 liter buckets.

The factory has six lines for the production of putty, five of which are fully automated by the MES system with associated PLC communication. Raw materials for the products come from mines in Glanshammar and Sala, among others.

“As our old production system and also our hardware began to become obsolete, we began the procurement of new systems. The choice fell on the Empir Industry MES system, which matches our needs for flexibility and adaptability,” says Tomas, who is Supply Chain Officer at Scanspac.

With unique recipes for each product, a mixture is created using dosages and weighing of different materials. The recipes are downloaded from the business system to the MES and then all handling takes place automatically where the MES system controls the entire process through communication with the PLC which executes all operations. In cases where manual handling is required, the operator receives instructions on their station screens about what to do. The mix consists of a number of sub-processes that are performed in parallel with individual operations for each sub-process. All processes are synchronized via the MES system and the PLC.

At the end of the mixing, a number of samples are taken on the material and if everything is approved, the operators continue with bottling the material into selected containers, all according to instructions visualized on MES station screens.

“Another central part of the MES system is the follow-up and the reports, where, above all, the possibility of being able to influence the design of the reports is important for Scanspac”, says Tomas.

Today, the factory has full control over all mixtures, which dosages have been made, which materials and tanks have been used, and how long each step has taken. You can also follow up if there have been any alarms, underdosing or overdosing or if there have been any retries of dosages. Finally, there is also a good follow-up of OEE and stop cause reporting per manufacturing line.

Another important part for Scanspac is to be able to detect early time differences in runs for a line with the same recipe and in that way get a quick indication if supplementary maintenance needs to be carried out on the line.

“You can compare how the handling of materials changes, e.g. that the same material is handled in varying ways for the different lines and operators, where time is an important factor. The goal is to reduce the mixing times for each line and compare the lines continuously,” says Tomas.

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