Change management software puts fizz back into Coca Cola production

The Wakefield plant – the largest soft drinks factory in Europe – has grown into a regional service centre, handling product throughout the UK, and producing 4,000 cans and 3,280 bottles of soft drinks per minute across nine lines. David Bryden, technical services technician at CCE Wakefield, explains the plant uses a wide range of devices, including 93 Siemens S5 PLCs, 11 Siemens S7 PLCs, 20 Allen Bradley (Rockwell Automation) ControlLogix PLCs, 31 Allen Bradley SLC500 PLCs, and 26 Universal devices – InTouch SCADA (supervisory control and data acquistion) and others. And it’s not just about diversity of PLC supply – they’re also on several networks across the site, including a legacy Siemens S5 H1 network, while some PLCs and devices are also standalone. Bryden says CCE uses Mass AutoSave, from US-based software supplier MDT Software, as its enterprise source management solution, protecting, saving, restoring, discovering and tracking all device and document changes. The system unifies plant automation software under one common user interface, resulting in a secure, well documented, controlled environment, particularly when it comes to backup. When a change is made to a PLC program, he explains, designated users are immediately notified via email, logic-to-logic and selected data table value comparison reports are generated and users are also notified of differences via email. “The system supplied by MAC Solutions is very reliable and easy to use,” says Bryden. “It maintains an excellent ancestor history of all PLC program files on site. With its universal capability, the software is also used to store non-PLC files. “We recently had a problem with a Siemens S5 PLC controlling our water treatment plant, where all the code was lost in the PLC, therefore stopping all water supplies used in our production process. We quickly checked out the archived copy of the water treatment plant PLC code from Mass AutoSave to one of our Siemens field PGs and reloaded the code locally at the PLC. “We were up and running with only five minutes downtime to Line Four. On another occasion, our main preparation PLC fell over, only this time we were able to immediately reload the code over the network from Mass AutoSave – incurring zero downtime. “In both cases, the reloaded code was up-to-date, due to Mass AutoSave’s Compared Schedule, which updates the ancestor files if discrepancies are found. Few discrepancies are now detected by the software, as the technicians on-site now use [it] for checking out programs and verifying them again when making a new revision.”