AAW Control Systems
Industrial Temperature Monitoring Specialists

• webREACT
  Web enabled monitoring and control systems
• RIOT Station
  Monitoring systems
• Calibration
  Traceable test of temperature sensors and monitoring systems
• RIOT
  Remote input output transceiver
• Temperature Sensors
  For food and pharmaceutical industries
• IT
  Wireless monitoring and control systems
• Woodley Electronics
  Servicing, calibration and repair
• Digital Thermometers
  Digital thermometers and related measuring equipment.
• Data Loggers
  Digital data loggers and accountability
• Other Products
  Products not catagorized above

Paperless Systems

True computer based paperless systems within the process industry are becoming more and more important as they can provide accurate, validated information to all relevant departments via their own factory intranet, which is becoming common place in modern factories of today.

What is a Paperless System and why switch from a known tried and tested procedure?

A paperless system is one that requires no paperwork to be filled in by hand, no paperwork to be filed away for future reference and no paperwork to be passed on to other departments.

Paper System

Take the monitoring of room temperatures within a food-processing factory. Traditionally QA staff walked around all the relevant factory areas, entering the temperatures displayed, (on their hand held digital thermometers) onto preprinted daily forms. The form entries could be missed or incorrect temperatures could accidentally be entered, that is the human factor.

Paperless System

A paperless system of the above food-processing factory, would have temperature sensors placed at the correct heights and out of direct airflow from the cooling evaporators, within each of the process/storage areas.
The sensors would be connected via a network back to a main PC, which would be running bespoke supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, PC terminals would visually indicate all the areas of the factory and the temperatures of each of the monitored areas.
Temperature data would be stored on the PC every few seconds and could be displayed as a trend or a table or whatever format was required.
Most importantly the PC terminal "user interface" would be simple in its operation, detailing the actual site's room layouts.
At this point you have replaced the need for QA staff to walk round taking temperatures, but more importantly you have gained a lot more benefits.
Alarm setpoints would be built into the system, to automatically notify the department that there was a problem with the temperature within a certain area.
As the temperatures are taken every few seconds it is possible for the PC to diagnose problems before they become an issue and alert the relevant department, e.g. "Door Left Open" could be identified by how quickly the temperature changed within a Small Box Chill.
Information could be displayed in different formats for different departments; multiple systems could display the information, e.g. one system in QA and another in Engineering etc.
The monitoring of temperatures would continue at night when there are no QA staff available and inform Security if there is a problem.
Cleaning times could be programmed in to check that the cleaners have completed all the required rooms (as the temperatures rise during this process).
Customer Audits are incredibly important and being able to have all the monitoring information for any time over the last 3 years available at the click of a mouse button is far more acceptable than hundreds of daily hand written reports.
Backed up data would now be held on CD, this would take up a fraction of the space that all the filed paperwork requires.
All room sensors could be calibrated to traceable UKAS certification. Which if completed on site would check the cabling, PLCs and the system software so that calibration offsets could be used to make sure that the temperatures that are displayed are accurate.
From the above it can be seen that there are a lot of advantages in implementing a paperless system so why are there still manual systems out there. The bottom line is that a large financial investment is required and a time commitment to integrate the new system and manage it correctly, (day-to-day operating procedures would have to change).

Incentives

Due to the implication of time and investment there has to be major incentives for companies to invest in paperless systems.
Consumer concern over health/safety and food hygiene has prompted the larger retailers to request that their suppliers can demonstrate that all the supplied products are produced to the required standard and they are traceable within the production process.
The saving in labour costs as the manual recording system would be redundant.
The potential saving of product costs when refrigeration problems are missed and product has to be disposed of.
The adaptability of the software, would allow other aspects of production to be integrated into the system at a later stage.

Batch Processing

Batch processing is an obvious example, when batches are cooked within ovens, product cooking and cooling curves need to be monitored and kept for validation purposes.
Batch information could be entered through a PC terminal; the start could be initiated manually through entering a start time or automatically via a digital input monitoring the status of the oven.
Product sensors could be inserted within the batch product and the cooking curve could be monitored and if it deviates too far away from the setpoint curve an alarm would be generated to inform the operator that there is a problem.
All the batch information including the temperature trend of the batch could be saved in various Excel based formats and the batch information could be accessed at any time in the future via its batch number and/or date.

Half Way House

A lot of food processors have entered the game with low end monitoring systems, to enable a central point for monitoring temperatures. This has helped, as some of these devices are able to view current temperatures, print reports, view historical data and most have some degree of alarm functionality included.
They are all limited in operation, as their functionality is predefined. They could never be adapted into true paperless systems.
They all have two short-term advantages over bespoke SCADA systems and that is they can be bought off the shelf and require only a low initial investment.

The Future Paperless Factories

To stay competitive in the business environment costs have to be kept to a minimum. One way is to remove the complete paper trail throughout the factory.
With the use of PC terminals at all key stages throughout a product life cycle, a product could be produced without a single piece of handwritten paperwork.
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system would process the orders to create the production batch schedules.
The batch information would be displayed on the production PC terminal.
From this point a bar code would be printed to accompany the batch during the various production stages through to dispatch. At each relevant stage the batch would be logged into the system via a bar code reader to identify where the batch is and how long before it is ready to be dispatched.
All the relevant departments have access to the data and any problems would appear on the relevant PC terminals as soon as it occurs or even before, e.g. engineering departments could be informed by the system's software that a refrigeration compressor is drawing an abnormally high current or it has a low oil pressure etc. a potential room temperature problem resolved before it occurs.
All engineering data would be available on the manager's PC terminal, but he would not have to wade through all the data collected, because the system software would do that for him. Pre-emptive work schedules would be waiting for the maintenance engineers when they start their shift.
Monitoring and control systems would all be interlinked, as the potential cost savings would be vast.
Through intranets and extranets product life cycle information would be available to retailers without them leaving their office.
Eventually the consumer would be able to verify the product they are about to eat has been kept within its temperature limits via their Internet enabled fridge.

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