Process safety: enclosures firm goes double Dutch

Whether the concerns are about damage caused by fire, dust, water or even electrocution, enclosure solutions are becoming ever more important to ensure plant safety.

Equipment protection is playing an increasingly essential role in maintaining output and satisfying national and international regulations.

Dutch firms Royal A-Ware and Hellebrekers Technieken operate in two very different markets – the former is a high-end food manufacturer and exporter, the latter provides process automation solutions – and yet both have recently benefited from enclosures.

Royal A-Ware sought out Eldon, a global manufacturer of standard and customised enclosures, to help ensure its new cheese factory in the Netherlands would be built and maintained with the highest degree of safety.

The company has been in the business of producing, ageing and packaging cheese as a family business for more than 125 years, so building a new factory was a major investment.

Today Eldon’s enclosures are used throughout the new plant in a range of environments

Eldon became the preferred choice for the plant designers and architects in their bid to standardise building components, while also meeting the strict standards expected in the food and beverage industry.

Today Eldon’s enclosures are used throughout the new plant in a range of environments that include no-care, basic/ medium care, dry and wet rooms.

In dry and no care zones, such as motor control centres and energy facilities, Eldon supplied floor standing enclosures, while in the basic/medium care or wet areas, as well as outside, wall mounted enclosures were installed. A series of consoles were also harnessed for field connection boxes.

“[We are] pleased about having enjoyed excellent co-operation with Royal A-Ware at every level, from start to end,” says Ype-Jan van Slooten, sales manager at Eldon Netherlands.

Food for thought

The new factory was inaugurated in July 2015, just a few months after it was completed, following a two-year build project. It comprises a 500 square metre milk reception area, a pre factory and cheese making, storage and logistics areas.

“[Eldon’s] bespoke service was extremely flexible,” says Jan Postmus, project engineer for Royal A-Ware.

“They delivered reliability, flexibility, and the implementation of our specifications, prototypes and personal support.”

Meanwhile, the key areas of expertise for the Industrial Automation department at Hellebrekers Technieken include the engineering of PLC control systems, SCADA visualisation systems and climate control systems.

It has also developed a modular, license-free manufacturing execution system software package known as Visual Link that includes modules for Visual Control, Visual Performance and Visual Analytics. The company says the industrial enclosure solutions from Eldon make an important contribution in the area of Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE).

A direct link between the PLC for the production line and the PLC installed in the enclosure ensures that faults causing downtime can be investigated

The input to gain a reliable OEE figure comes from sensors installed at critical points along the production line. These sensors are linked to a PLC that, with several other components, is installed in an MPGS-series enclosure from Eldon.

A direct link between the PLC for the production line and the PLC installed in the enclosure from Eldon ensures that faults causing downtime can be read out and investigated.

The enclosure is positioned in such a way that an operator on the production line can allocate and assign faults directly using an integrated 19-inch touchscreen PC.

This is the only way to ensure that the calculated OEE figure remains up to date, allowing production planning to be linked to the actual production figures, Hellebrekers says.

By responding to frequently occurring faults before they occur, preventive maintenance can be performed to avoid prolonged downtime, Hellebrekers adds.