Operational excellence results drive winners of 2011 Invensys Operations Management OPEN
by Denis du Buisson, 10 November 2011
Contest recognises excellence in Asset, Control, People and Environment and Safety with South African System Integrator Bytes Systems Integration winning the award in the latter category.
November 10, Johannesburg - Invensys Operations Management, a global provider of technology systems, software solutions and consulting services to the manufacturing and infrastructure operations industries, today announced the winners of its annual Invensys Operations Management OPEN competition. Contestants were nominated for their innovative use of Invensys products and solutions to generate significant business results in four categories of Operational Excellence: Asset Excellence, Control Excellence, People Excellence as well as Environment and Safety Excellence.
The winners were selected based on the business results they achieved using an Invensys Operations Management product or solution and were recognised during the company's OpsManage'11 series of global industry events that kicked off in Paris and Nashville, Tenn. Entries were judged by industry experts, trade magazine editors, industry analysts and the Invensys Operations Management executive team.
The 2011 Invensys Operations Management OPEN winner for Asset Excellence is Frito-Lay of Plano, Texas. The Control Excellence award went to Arkema of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The People Excellence award was given to Campbell's Soup of Camden, N.J. and Eskom of Johannesburg, South Africa, was recognised for Environment and Safety Excellence.
"Marking the seventeenth year of the OPEN award programme, our customers continue to generate impressive business results working with Invensys and our partner ecosystem," said Mark Davidson, vice president, central marketing operations, Invensys Operations Management. "Originally established as the Wonderware OPEN, we expanded the contest two years ago to include the complete InFusion® Enterprise Control System portfolio, which includes all product brands from Invensys Operations Management, along with open integration to virtually any other system or application. As always, this competition gives our partners, clients, potential customers and the industry in general an opportunity to recognise thought leadership in action. These organisations are leading the way for their respective industries in the acceleration of Operational Excellence and the associated creation of sustainable business value."
With more than $10 billion in annuals sales, Frito-Lay is one of the largest divisions of PepsiCo and the leading convenient foods manufacturer in North America. It controls 65 percent of the savoury snack market and its 12 brands each have annual North America sales of more than $100 million. Four of those are "mega-brands," each having more than $1 billion in annual sales. Frito-Lay uses the Avantis® enterprise asset management solution from Invensys Operations Management to continually improve its asset optimisation strategy, thereby enhancing its dynamic changeover process, reducing downtime and improving cash flow.
"Frito-Lay has always been a leader in asset performance, and we have a relentless commitment to continuous improvement," said Ed Michel, reliability manager for Frito-Lay. "By fully utilising the power of the Avantis asset management solution, we have been able to execute an inclusive asset optimisation strategy that contributes directly to our bottom line performance."
The Control Excellence award was given to Arkema for implementing a redundant, wireless automation infrastructure at its Rotterdam plant, which produces gas odorants for use in the food and perfume industry. Arkema employs 14,000 people globally in its 80 production plants and generates close to €6 billion in revenue. As part of the wireless infrastructure, Invensys installed an integrated automation and safety system, including its Foxboro® I/A Series® distributed control system, Triconex® Triple Redundant Safety System, Foxboro field instruments and an Alarm Rationalisation System, to help Arkema control the critical and hazardous areas of its Rotterdam plant. To further improve safety and increase the efficiency of its workforce, Arkema uses the redundant wireless infrastructure along with remote operator personal digital assistant—PDA—devices that allow Arkema Rotterdam personnel to operate the plant outside of the control room.
"Before we had a shift occupation in which we could produce about 47 percent and after we implemented the PDA wireless solution, we went up to 75 percent, almost a 25 percent of increase in production," said Mike Spronkmans, manager of technical operations at Arkema Rotterdam.
Campbell's Soup is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world. Every year, Campbell's Soup sells almost 2 billion cans of soup, accounting for more than 60 percent of the U.S. wet soup market. More than 80 percent of all U.S. households, nearly 100 million homes, purchase its soup every year. Campbell's Soup was recognised for People Excellence because of the exemplary work performed at its Napoleon, Ohio, and Sacramento, Calif., plants plant. These projects used Invensys' Wonderware® IntelaTrac® mobile solution, which enabled Campbell's Soup to save paper and time, increase employee engagement and empower packaging operations personnel to more tightly control production for superior taste and quality.
"Campbell Soup quickly saw the Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile solution as a way to drive process improvements, increase efficiency around autonomous maintenance activities and help streamline the manual data collection activities of its production staff," said Darren Kline, vice president, marketing and business development, Wonderware North, a key member of Invensys Operations Management's global ecosystem of partners. "We collaborated with Campbell Soup to select the best business case and then worked with them to implement the solution at two production facilities, helping to ensure that the technology meets all of their stated needs. The combination of their expertise on how best to apply this tool to their work processes, combined with our expertise on the best application of the product, proved to be a great combination for empowering Campbell Soup's operations staff to deliver improved business results."
Eskom Holdings Limited, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, won the Environment and Safety Excellence Award. Eskom generates, transmits and distributes electricity to industrial, mining, commercial, agricultural and residential customers and redistributors. It generates approximately 95 percent of the electricity used in South Africa and approximately 45 percent of the electricity used in all of Africa. Eskom created an enterprise-wide Environmental Monitoring System using Invensys Operations Management's ArchestrA® System Platform, the open integration and collaboration platform inside the InFusion Enterprise Control System. The system is helping Eskom meet generation contract obligations, sustain revenues and, more importantly, operate within environmental limits to avoid non-compliance penalties.
"This project proves once again that the ArchestrA System Platform can add tremendous value to any organisation. The flexibility of the solution enabled us to connect to multiple source systems and applications so we can deliver critical real-time decision-making information to the highest levels of the company," said Gerhard Greeff of Bytes Systems Integration, the System Platform-certified system integrator who executed the project at Eskom.
For more information, please contact: Jaco Markwat, +2711 607 8100 | jaco.markwat@invensys.co.za