CASE STUDY: COFFEE MANUFACTURING COMPANY REDUCES PRODUCT WASTE WITH PRECISE PID TEMPERATURE CONTROL
Industry: Coffee Manufacturer
Customer Profile:
Quality Cup Systems, which also operates under the name Tazza Pronto, is located in Tyler, Texas. This organization primarily operates in the Coffee Extracts business / industry within the Food and Kindred Products sector. This organization has been operating for approximately 4 years. Quality Cup Systems is estimated to generate $21.4 million in annual revenues, and employs approximately 150 people at this single location.
Challenge:
Waste of up to 10% of product (coffee grounds) due to the improper seal in a single cup coffee serving pod (i.e. the small single serving coffee containers used by machines like Keurigs.) This refers specifically to the lid that prevents the ground coffee contents from spilling during the automated process whereby each container is filled and sealed. This customer faced many challenges, including maintain contractual obligations with Wal-Mart.
Facility in Tyler, TX was running two production lines 24 Hours Per Day 7 Days a Week of Single Cup Coffee Containers producing 10,000 cups per line per day
For every batch of Single Cups of Coffee containers, the company was throwing away 10% of product due to improper seal of coffee cup container.
The company was losing in excess of $30,000 per month in waste product
How product efficiency was achieved:
IndustLabs was able to eliminate 90% of the waste of the Single Cup Coffee Filled Operation by implementing a precise temperature control system. The temperature control system involved 32 Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) feedback loops for temperature control, a Human-to-Machine interface, and all custom software to operate and run equipment. Before IndustLabs temperature control system Tazza Pronto was operating all 32 Coffee Fillers/Sealers with a +/-15 degrees temperature fluctuations. Due to the high variability in the temperature system Tazza Pronto’s product defect and rejects was at an all-time high causing them a $30,000 lost each month. The temperature control system that IndustLabs designed can control temperature set point within +/- 0.01 of a degree of temperature variability from set point. Our temperature control system allowed Tazza Pronto to eliminate the high temperature fluctuations therefore the product defects and rejects were drastically reduced to below two percent of production output.
Results:
Able to Control all 32 Individual Coffee Fillers / Sealers independent from one another via Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) feedback loop.
Designed and Installed a touchscreen program for user interface of machine
Our temperature control system can control temperature setpoint with in +/- 0.01 of a degree of temperature variability from set point.
Implemented auto tune features to the temperature control feedback loop which eliminates the time to tune each Coffee Filler/Sealer.
Eliminated the $30,000 lost per month of wasted product.
The customer was operating improved equipment with very minimum down time.
System RIO was paid off in less than 6 months of saving
