Creemore Springs Brewery Limited is an example of how manufacturers within the food and beverage industry are embracing automation to improve production quantity and quality.

In the video above, we take a look at how small to medium sized breweries like Creemore can maximize the impact of automation, turning a small footprint factory into a major production facility.

Our brewery had grown past the point where we were able to operate with just a limited group of people operating on tribal knowledge, said Geoff Davies, P. Eng, head of operations at Creemore Springs Brewery and National Supply Chain.

Through some process training and automation, we're able to more reliably operate the plant, with less chance of error and safety hazards. We worked with Trinamics, a local automation supplier, to install state of the art packaging equipment, Davies added.

Working together with Creemore Springs, Trinamics successfully designed and installed a uniquely customized case packer design, fitted for their smaller facility footprint.

We developed an intermittent motion case packer and tray packer system, which packages bottles at rates of up to 300 bottles a minute, with 98 to 99 percent efficiency, said Karan Sabherwal, senior mechanical project engineer at Trinamics.

The custom case packer design uses all servo drives, with more than 13 axes on each of the machines.

Electronic cams, designed to be similar to mechanical cams, are controlled through the servos and quarter feedback. This allows operators to control variables including velocity, acceleration and jerk, for smooth motion.

We're totally toolless and can do a changeover in five to 10 minutes, Sabherwal said. We use the greatest of Allen Bradley technology for our PLC controls and everything is Ethernet controlled now. Two machines in the Creemore plant talk to each other through PLCs and we have remote access modules, which in case of a break down, the customer will be alerted, they can give us a call and we can get online with the machine quickly to diagnose the problem and walk them through how to fix it.

Optical laser sensing and time of flight distance measuring are used due to the reflective surfaces of the bottles.

For more information, watch the video above and visit the Creemore Springs and Trinamics websites.

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VIDEO: Going Big on Automation in a Small Footprint Facility - ENGINEERING.com