Guissona Food Corporation Automates Its Animal Feed Plant in Bujaraloz

Background

Guissona is one of Catalonia’s leading food companies and has been in business for over fifty years. The company raises livestock and performs its industrial and commercial processes with such thoroughness that the product is able to reach consumers directly, without the need for middlemen.

Guissona is involved in a wide range of activities including: the breeding of poultry and livestock; manufacturing of animal feed; breeding, fattening and slaughtering of animals; processing and preparation of different food products; and the distribution and direct selling of its products in over 400+ BonÀrea stores.

The goal of Guissona is to improve the productivity of its livestock farms and also cater to the needs of its customers, who have embraced their efficacy and savoir faire. The Company enjoys a strong reputation for producing a variety of safe, high-quality and reasonably priced products for its customers. To strengthen this brand reputation, the corporation boasts cutting-edge facilities and a team of dedicated professionals. As a testament to this recognition, Guissona has been awarded the ISO 9002 certification for its high standards of production, installation and servicing; the ISO 22000 certification for the highest levels of safety of their meat-based products; and the ISO 14001 certification for its environmental management.

For about fifteen years, Guissona has teamed with Rockwell Automation to incorporate its solutions in various animal feed manufacturing and processing plants. More significantly, in 2009, the organisation opened a facility in Bujaraloz (Zaragoza), which integrates the latest industrial automation technology.

Challenge

Since its adoption in 1995, the ISA S88 standard has served to guide the implementation of batch-based process control systems in production centres, allowing high levels of flexibility and reusability. When Guissona established its new Bujaraloz factory, it decided to implement the ISA S88 standards across the entire facility—to help reduce the costs, engineering efforts and time-to-market; while improving flexibility and enhancing process quality.

“The Automation Manager of the Animal Foods department explains: “This move was a great challenge for us as it was the first time that we had implemented a batch system in our facilities. For that reason, we decided on the Rockwell Automation PlantPAx™ process automation system. This allowed us to fully utilise our installed capacity and increased the flexibility in the way that we could edit recipes, either by the team in charge of formulation or by the software designed for that purpose.

“Another important challenge,” he continues, “was the integration with our ERP system to enable us to correctly send and receive order information—without forgetting “the importance of materials management and traceability.”