Pet Food Plant Simulation – Evaluating Proposed Equipment Configuration

A pet food company asked IPACT to assist in evaluating a new proposed plant configuration.  The configuration had several lines that produced components (“kibbles”) according to a pre-assigned schedule, and then sent them to a matrix of storage bins.  In order to keep equipment and costs down, each kibble production line was only able to reach a certain subset of the storage bins.  Numerous packaging lines then drew and blended components from the storage bins, also according to a pre-assigned schedule.  The concern with this configuration was availability of storage bins to receive kibbles from the lines as the production week progressed, as well as the ability of packaging lines to be able to access all the components that they needed to blend together for their products.  The simulation permitted virtually effortless changes to the equipment configuration, allowing greater or fewer storage bins, and changes to the paths between kibble production lines and storage bins, just by changing a configuration file.

IPACT developed the simulation (which had a visualization component), and then provided it to the engineers at the customer’s site.  They tested various production and packaging schedules against the intended equipment configuration, and found that this configuration would usually become “gridlocked” about half-way through the production week, with kibble production lines unable to send their product to a storage bin, and packaging lines unable to access all of the components required for their products.  They modified the proposed equipment configuration because of this. They were able to show with the simulation that the new configuration allowed much better product flow in the second half of the production week.

Discovering this problem after construction would have been tremendously expensive to the customer, both in lost production and in retrofit costs.  IPACT’s simulation enabled them to identify the problem for a tiny fraction of those costs, and modify the plans for the plant before construction began.

Integrated Process Automation & Control Technologies