CONTROL & AUTOMATION
MEETING CONSUMER DEMANDS
PRODUCTS4AUTOMATION
MOVICON SCADA SUPPORTS ONE OF
ITALY’S LARGEST WINEMAKERS
Growing quality grape varieties isn’t the
only clincher to gain a foothold in the
wine market. Advanced automation and
process control solutions help in meeting
consumer demands - while maximising
plant productivity. One of Italy’s leading
winemakers invested in Progea’s Movicon
SCADA to manage its production lines more
efficiently.
Paul Hurst of Products4Automation (P4A),
the UK representative for Movicon says the
installation has been so successful that the
technology is being adopted by beverage
producers in the UK.
Located in Emilia Romagna, one of the most
fertile areas in Italy for winemaking, the
Cantine Riunite & Civ Cooperative produces
and distributes its variety of Lambrusco and
other sparkling wines worldwide with a
registered designation of origin. The winery
has been constantly building its business
since 1950 and has become the most
profitable wine producer in the country,
with over 4,300 hectares under vine and 130
million of bottles sold worldwide annually. A
key ingredient in this recipe for success was
the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies
to improve its production lines and the
quality of its drinks.
More precisely, to maintain its three bottling
lines running seamlessly, Cantine Riunite
& Civ needed a high level of automation
62
PECM Issue 35
and supervision. As a result, an essential
technological advance consisted in
developing a supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) system to manage and
control the processes and the equipment
rooms.
The SCADA system promotes efficient
production by providing real-time and
historical information on the different
bottling stages and on the machinery on
the line. More precisely, each function is
described in a specific, detailed page. For
example, the section dedicated to filling
shows the number of bottles that have been
filled, the ones remaining, the broken or
damaged ones, as well as the speed of the
machine. The screen information provided
concerns both real-time and historical data
on all batches. In addition, relevant process
parameters, such as temperatures and
machine throughput time, can be modified
in order to improve the efficiency and the
quality of the end product.
The maintenance supervisory solution
controls the different plant systems,
including internal and external cooling,
central water supply, heating, purification,
ventilation as well as lighting in the wine
cellar. The Client provides comprehensive
diagnostics combined with alarm and
message management. In addition,
dedicated pages that combine ‘Real-time’,
‘Trend’ and ‘Historical Trend’ show relevant
data and analytics on alarm occurrences,
acknowledgements and resets. In this
way it is possible to minimise downtime
as well as determine probable causes
of equipment malfunctioning. Also, it is
possible to visualise periods of equipment
inactivity, calculate averages and manage
any required maintenance.
As a result, Movicon allows the plant
operators at Cantine Riunite & Civ
to continuously control the process
parameters and the correct functioning
of the machines, as well as intervene
to improve the efficiency or perform
maintenance activities minimising
downtime. Furthermore, the Historian
allows users to manage and insert
comments in audits for tracking changes, as
well as to request duplicate authentication
to validate modifications independently on
the client station.
Since the initial install, Cantine Riunite & Civ
has decided to strengthen the relationship
with Progea by installing the Pro.Energy
module to monitor, analyse and optimise
energy efficiency across the bottling plant.
In this way, the wines of future years will
have a lower carbon footprint and be more
sustainable.
www.products4automation.co.uk