Digital Blending Solution Profile

Technology and experience focused on solving your blending challenges

Issues
• Making sure raw material volume
matches formula requirements
• Formula adjustments to allow
alternative raw material
• Variations in raw material character-
istics (color, acidity, moisture, etc)
• Impact of offline lab testing
processes on production
• Rework or scrap in production
• Throughput and capital required
• Production data to monitor and
improve quality
Overview
Blending two or more materials is a common operation in
Results manufacturing facilities. But this does not mean you’re not looking
• Increase recipe changeover speed
for ways to improve this process.
• Dynamic ingredient control to
provide product consistency Consumer demand, raw material supply, and government regulations
are driving the need for flexibility in blending operations. New
• Reduce lab test waiting time
products are added and existing products need to be modified to
• Reduce quarantined, reworked
meet the changing demands of consumers. Raw material supply can
or scrapped product
change, or cost pressure may require different ingredients. Systems
• Reduce capital equipment
that can quickly respond to these challenges and support continuous
• Enable 6-sigma or other quality improvement, while maintaining quality requirements, will give you
improvement efforts
an advantage.

Challenges
Manufacturing and production facilities that handle blending
operations need to meet quality standards and tighten quality limits
by reducing product variability. The final product must contain a
defined ratio of raw materials, and when they are not blended to the
correct finished product specification, the product must be reworked
or disposed of as waste.
An automated blending system cycle time for production can be connectivity to field devices for
will allow you to consistently long, and achieving “first time measuring flow and in-line analysis,
execute recipes or formulations for right” manufacturing is difficult. along with seamless interconnec-
each product. The automation Automated blending technologies tivity into critical business systems
system provides the capability to leverage a special digital blending like MRP, LIMS, etc. The design of
easily change the recipes to reflect algorithm that is based on the solution algorithm and
changes in the production of one monitoring and controlling the pre-engineered components is
product, or the quick introduction quantity or mass of material being based on our experience and
of a new product. The system will blended and correlating back with expertise in solving blending
also handle variability in the raw the quality characteristics of both problems.
material by adaptive technology the raw material and finished
Key elements of the solution are:
that dynamically modifies recipe product. This allows blending
set-points based upon raw material operations to utilize their capital • Master controller
quality characteristics. equipment more efficiently and • Ratio
reduce or eliminate the need for • Pacing
intermediary vessels.
Example: Blending beer to final • Blend shutdown
alcohol content requires recognition
• Analyzer/optimizer feedback
of the alcohol percentage in the feed, Solutions
a calculation and adjustment of the Rockwell Automation has a digital This solution has been developed
water volume to achieve target blending solution based on using the Rockwell Automation
alcohol percent, and feedback to modular pre-engineered compo- library of pre-developed modules
make sure the percentage was nents and a proven digital and solution specifications.
achieved. blending algorithm. The solutions This approach reduces risk in
are scalable from a simple blend project implementation and
with few feeds, to mixing over 20 provides enhanced capability over
Plants have taken many ap-
different feed lines. custom systems. It can then be
proaches to solve their challenges.
easily replicated across multiple
The traditional approach has been These modular solutions are deliv-
sites allowing for quicker start up
to blend the material in large tanks. ered on the Rockwell Automation
consistency in systems and
But there is a cost for the tanks and Integrated Architecture. This
common training and support.
floor space is needed. The resulting provides control of operations and

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Publication CPG-AP001A-EN-P – October 2008 Copyright ©2008 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in USA.