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Pepperidge Farm - Plant of the Year

Many of you have seen the article from Food Engineering "Plant of the Year: Pepperidge Farm, Built for Speed by Kevin T. Higgins 4/01/2004. This article describes a ground up $72 million project to build a new 265,000 sq. ft. Pepperidge Farm bakery in Bloomfield, Connecticut and the cutting edge control components that were integrated to make this a state of the art facility. The process of helping to introduce Pepperidge Farm and Campbell Soup to the SCADA architecture to run this facility was started several years ago when Q-mation and ACP helped to present Terminal Services to Campbell Soup corporate Engineering. This process stemmed out of a project to replace an older antiquated control system at Pepperidge's Lakeland, FL facility and to engineer a system that reduced maintenance burdens and allowed for easy expansion and centralized management of the plant's SCADA system.

It was quickly determined that the needs of the plant could best be serviced by implementing a terminal services thin client architecture around ACP's Thin Manager software and Wonderware's InTouch for Terminal Services HMI. Terminal services allows the centralized management of a SCADA application by allowing all software that is needed to run an application to be installed on a centralized server system. The actual plant floor interfaces become industrial thin clients that link into this server to get and display the information that is needed. These thin clients run no software themselves and are essentially throw away devices. If a client fails, another unit is plugged into the network and it immediately assumes the identity of the replaced unit without the user ever having to load any software. If any software updates are needed or if the system needs to be expanded, the user need only implement these changes on the servers. The plant floor client devices need never be touched. Management of this system becomes a simple point and click configuration that is easily implemented through ACP's Thin Manager software.

To prove out this powerful technology, Q-mation, working with Campbell Soup corporate engineering, assisted in first setting up and then testing a small Terminal Services for InTouch system. Once proven to meet all of their needs, this architecture was then successfully rolled out to Pepperidge’s Lakeland, FL facility. The benefits were witnessed immediately and lead to this system architecture becoming the HMI/SCADA system architecture for the new Bloomfield facility that went on to become Food Engineering's plant of the year.

For Campbell Soup and Pepperidge Farm, Terminal services provides two key powerful benefits. First, very easy replacement of failed HMI terminals. Campbell Soup recognized the effort and wasted production time that occurred each time a plant floor PC failed and a new PC had to be built and installed. The ability to pull an off the shelf device out and replace a failed unit almost instantaneously provided significant time and production savings. Second, application software and operating system maintenance are all done on a single computer (the terminal server). No longer do updates and changes need to be installed on every PC in the system. Now, from a central server, all system maintenance can be accomplished. The Terminal Services for InTouch and ACP enabled ThinClient combination is now standard in all Campbell Soup and Pepperidge plants.

For the Bloomfield, CT facility, Q-mation worked with Pepperidge and the multiple OEM equipment suppliers to develop operator HMI workstations per specific requirements. This included pedestal mount, wall mount, and Vertica Arm mounted units from STRONGARM that incorporated the new industrial thin clients on which the company standardized. Q-mation also assisted Pepperidge Farm in managing the multiple OEMs supplying equipment for this project. This included introducing the OEMs to STRONGARM products, working with the OEM on integration of STRONGARM systems with their equipment, and managing delivery of Wonderware software, thin client computers, and STRONGARM HMI stations. Additionally, during startup and commissioning, Q-mation provided technical assistance to Campbell Soup/Pepperidge engineers and worked closely with the system integrator to insure that the overall SCADA system was architected and implemented successfully.

By providing value added services in four key areas (introduction of new technology (terminal services), custom operator HMI design (STRONGARM), coordination with multiple OEMs, and product technical support during startup), Q-mation helped to insure that the startup of this new important facility went off with minimal issues. The results, as the Plant of the Year Award attests, were very successful.