An example of the work we have carried out in the malting industry is a project using the latest PLC automation equipment from Mitsubishi Electric to improve the manufacturing process at Crisp, the UK’s leading independent malting company.

Crisp felt they were being held back by a legacy control system, which was controlling the speed that process anomalies were detected and responded to, therefore impacting the efficiency of the overall process.

As Group Engineering Manager for Crisp, David Spiers, explained: “The existing PLCs were becoming unreliable which left us exposed to the risk of long-lasting unplanned downtime events. For example, if we had a power outage it would take the engineers 3-4 hours to return the system to full operation, which with our production process and fixed delivery schedules to meet really wasn’t acceptable.”

To address these problems, Crisp got in contact with us. We then sourced new PLC’s from our preferred vendor, Mitsubishi Electric, to replace their six legacy ones. A FDS was developed and agreed by all parties. From this FDS the software was developed and on completion a full simulation of the plant was carried out at our premises in conjunction with Crisp.

We then carried out the complete changeover of the system, carried out over one shutdown period so minimising downtime for the Crisp by using a scheduled service window and completing the PLC control system replacement in just four days.