Electricity and Control May 2025

Control systems + automation

The Feige 20 L filling line.

ing of materials, to maintain quali ty control and FUCHS’ high quality standards in its finished products. The state-of-the-art filling lines, detailed below, are all highly auto mated. Completed in December 2024, the expansion has increased production capacity by over 40%. Plant automation Regarding the plant automation and electrical engineering consultants, Deppe says here, and in several other specialist fields, the FUCHS Group works with preferred consultants and suppliers, where their understanding of the FUCHS business and its operational needs is well established and thus advantageous. Stadler & Schaaf, based in Germany, is a preferred supplier for the FUCHS Group and handled the automation, control and instrumentation systems for the new plant. OCME, based in Parma, Italy, is also a preferred supplier, as a specialist in filling, packing and palletising lines, as is Feige, in Germany, which specialises in larger filling lines, including drum filling. Thami Mzolo is excited by the capabilities introduced with the automation of the new production lines and the benefits they have brought to the plant and the company. He highlights that DRA Global did a great job in terms of attention to detail in the design and execution of the project and says, “Since commissioning, we have achieved 100% right-first-time manufacturing in the new plant.” With this project, the high-volume fast-moving large-batch products have been moved out of the existing plant to the new production facility. Mzolo explains, “With the automation of these lines, our intention was to maximise e”iciencies, accuracy – minimising waste – and quality. Automation enables us to achieve higher throughput and higher accuracy in production processes and, importantly, the control system is fully integrated into our existing SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. We are seeing the benefits.” The three new filling lines significantly increase throughput for bulk filling (that is for road tankers), for IBCs (1 000 m 3 containers) and drums, as well as 20 L pails, and small packs, typically one-litre and five-litre pack sizes. Mzolo explains that bulk line filling is fully automated using

The new tank farm provides significantly expanded storage and blending capacity.

The three new filling lines increase throughput for bulk filling, IBCs, and drums, as well as 20 L pails, and smaller packs.

loadcells to ensure the correct quantity is filled every time, and drums and IBCs can be packed interchangeably. The new 20-litre pail line also uses loadcells to monitor filling and a vision system to ensure correct labelling as well as a cap sensor that ensures good quality in the product pack at the end of the line. The small pack line includes ten modular stations and eight of these are fully automated. This line runs one-litre and five-litre products interchangeably, depending on the product configuration. Quality assurance technology includes loadcells at each filling station, to ensure correct fill quantities, vision sensors that check pack labels to ensure they match product and pack size, and to check caps to ensure no leaking bottles are packed for dispatch, and a checkweigher to ensure there

MAY 2025 Electricity + Control

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