IMPAQT adds value to primary processes

“With Marel’s IMPAQT software, we get so much more control and insight. IMPAQT has all the intelligence needed to show on my screen exactly what is happening in the plant and where. We can pinpoint which line has stopped, for how many seconds, at what moment and what was the first problem in the line. We can even deduce trends from the information. It is simply amazing.”

No more panic

“Now that we’ve got IMPAQT, an alarm message doesn’t trigger panic any more. People aren’t running around the plant. I used to get a phone call for every line issue. Operators even came rushing into my office ‘The line has stopped running!’ Our technical people hurried to the machine to look into the control box. Most of the time operators had already pressed the reset button, making it even harder to track down the cause. That’s all over now.
Nowadays, our Technical Department people just watch their own IMPAQT screen in their office, where they can see the exact reason of an alarm. Sometimes they don’t even have to go into the plant anymore to solve the issue.”

Help inform our people

”When running two production shifts and three shifts for our technical service people, we have quite some communication between teams about what happened during the shifts. You need the full attention of everyone to get things sorted out. Registering what happened when and how long it lasted as IMPAQT does definitely helps inform everyone in the plant perfectly about what is going on,” says the plant manager.
“In the past, I used to walk through the plant, watching, listening and checking. That seemed to be the ideal way. Today, it is now clear to me that we have to use sensors, cameras and software to monitor the processes. We can then see whether things are really happening the way we think they should be happening.”

The origin of an issue

“IMPAQT has the positive effect that we’re no longer dependent of gut feelings of our people. When operators might think they have found the cause of an issue, IMPAQT knows for sure. We had a nice discussion with our evisceration operator, who has thirty years’ experience and who refused to believe that unit 9 of the Nuova wasn’t functioning as well as it could, as picked up by IMPAQT. He was convinced that it was pure coincidence each time the machine didn’t perform as it should. Eventually, I asked him to exchange units 9 and 10 and only then, after having looked in my system, did he admit that IMPAQT was right.”

Longer than expected

“If a machine is not set properly, operators might say, ‘Don’t worry, that error only lasted for two minutes at the most.’ When you go and check, you see that IMPAQT recorded 5 minutes! This ultra-reliable monitoring is truly important at our high line speeds. At our 13,5000 bph capacity, a 2 minute standstill results in 400 lost chicken. That’s quite a pile! A defective valve on the live bird handling mechanism, a standstill on a foot cutter or a safety cord on a machine, issues like this need some time to check what’s wrong and to start up again. A standstill always lasts longer than we all expect.”

Chop-chop

“I particularly like the chronological order of events in IMPAQT. When both evisceration line and chilling tunnel drop out, what was the first reason? That’s what I like to pinpoint. Usually operators don’t write what they observe in their notebook; they want to get the line running again as soon as possible. They look at what the machine interface tells them. They give it a pull, take out a trapped chicken, and when nothing’s wrong and everything seems okay, it’s chop-chop, up and running again. Afterwards, they might say, ‘The evisceration machine was the cause of the standstill”. Using IMPAQT, I can prove that the chilling tunnel stopped at 10:22 with the EV machine following 12 seconds later. The evisceration standstill was therefore the consequence of the chilling tunnel failure,” concludes the plant manager.