Applications
AriZona’s new plant connects SCADA/MES with ERP SOURCE: INDUCTIVE AUTOMATION
The AriZona Beverages plant will produce more than 60 million cases per year. The connection to ERP is just one of the SCADA system’s many benefits, which also include greater access to data, better mobility, improved efficiency, and lower costs.
AriZona wanted a comprehensive solution for HMI, SCADA and MES that would connect to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. ARIZONA BEVERAGES IS FAMOUS FOR ITS WIDE variety of teas, juices, and energy drinks. The company is based in Woodbury, New York, and its newest plant is in Keasbey, New Jersey. The plant opened in November 2019, is 621,000 square feet, and will produce 60 million cases of drinks per year on its six lines. For the new state-of-the-art plant, AriZona wanted a comprehensive solution for human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and a manufacturing execution system (MES) that would connect to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which is SAP. Working with system integrator Vertech, AriZona implemented a system based on Ignition by Inductive Automation and Sepasoft. Ignition is an industrial application platform with tools for building solutions in HMI, SCADA, and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Sepasoft MES provides control, traceability, and documentation of the transformation of raw materials into finished 11.202 1
goods in real time. Vertech has offices in California, Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee, and has extensive experience in food & beverage and other industries. Vertech had a tall order for the AriZona project: provide the SCADA platform, the MES solution, an ISA-88-compliant batch control system within SCADA, and a strong connection to SAP — while also improving access to data for better production efficiency and lower costs. Vertech provided all this and more. “We’ve improved efficiencies and processes throughout the plant,” said Shami Usmani, vice president of engineering and manufacturing for AriZona Beverages. He said the SCADA system’s ease of use and flexibility were a big part of the project’s success. “Getting analytics out of a manufacturing facility has always been difficult,” said Usmani. “We wanted bestin-class software to help us analyze the data received from the plant.” Paul Warning, solutions architect with
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Vertech, said Ignition fit the bill. “It’s an extremely flexible platform,” said Warning. “It has a lot of features that modern manufacturing facilities require. Adapting to the things that changed throughout the course of the project was easy to do with this platform.”
Connecting to SAP
“One of the key features that we implemented is the communication between SAP and our SCADA landscape,” said Kimon Stergakos, chief solutions architect for business applications and technology for AriZona. “We can perform a detailed schedule within MES and then transfer that detailed schedule along with all the required process and order information and bring it right into SAP with no intervention from either party. That was a big step for us. The other benefit of course is getting real-time information back from MES on our production counts. So we get real-time inventory information, and we get real-time
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