Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, today announced that it has worked closely with Actemium and Milkron to deploy a new future-ready, clean-in-place (CIP) kitchen and architecture at Mead Johnson Nijmegen, a leading baby- and infant-nutrition company.
The company’s existing infrastructure at its plant in the Netherlands was reaching the end of its life, with some components becoming obsolete, so Mead Johnson Nijmegen was looking to replace it with a contemporary solution.
The plant produces super-premium infant nutrition to supply Greater China, the largest market in the world. As with all foodstuffs, cleanliness and hygiene are paramount, so cleaning guidelines are incredibly strict, resulting in extremely thorough hygiene practices.
As well as the supply of the control solution, Rockwell Automation’s role included hardware engineering, electrical schematics, supply of control panels, and drafting Functional Design Software (FDS), followed by testing, commissioning, and aftercare.
Milkron, part of Krones AG, from Germany, designed the new CIP process according to the user requirement specification (URS), taking into account that these process installations had to integrate seamlessly into the existing production process.
According to Pierre Teszner, regional sales vice president, Central Europe, at Rockwell Automation: “Cleaning procedures – especially those in infant nutrition – must be very precisely controlled, logged, and analyzed. This type of attention to detail can only really be achieved by tightly integrated automation systems controlled by a robust software solution. The company and this plant standardize on Rockwell Automation, so seamless integration with other systems was never going to be an issue.”
Actemium, part of Vinci, and a gold-level System Integrator in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™ in The Netherlands, worked closely and effectively with Rockwell Automation to achieve the desired outcome.
Adriaan van de Ven, client manager at Actemium, explained: “Any food-based environment attracts special attention with regards to hygiene, so the CIP plant we design and commission has to exhibit specialist mechanical features and operational functionalities, including the deployment of advanced control systems. In this instance, there was also the need for minimal disruption, which was addressed through our deployment of pre-validated library code, which significantly sped up design, install, commissioning and integration.”
Olaf Drewelowsky, international sales manager from Milkron, added: “From planning to installation to handover: the focus throughout the entire course of the project was to transform the old CIP to a new CIP according to the latest standards and requirements, with a familiar look and feel for the operators. Another big challenge was the limited downtime available for the switchover to the new CIP system. But this was all made possible thanks to the good teamwork of all involved parties, and the comprehensive preparations prior switch-over and re-commissioning.”
Levi Pattiasina, project manager at Mead Johnson Nijmegen, concluded: “Our primary brief was to address obsolescence. There have been some small performance gains, but the goal here was to ensure that our facilities were ready for the future. All the engineering teams worked well together, and we had great support from Milkron and Actemium, from its knowledgeable team of engineers. We are very pleased with the new installation.”
Find out more about the integrated architecture solutions available from Rockwell Automation here.
About Actemium
Actemium, part of Vinci Energies, is a powerful worldwide network 100% dedicated to industrial process. Comprised of 400 Business Units located in 42 countries across the world. The brand network is a multi-disciplinary network, able to offer customized multi-technical, multi-site or multi-country services.
Actemium’s 22,000 experts work to deliver a range of safe and sustainable solutions & services across the entire industrial life cycle. In its day-to-day operations, Actemium builds on its powerful networking system expertise in each process in order to provide turnkey solutions.
About Milkron
Milkron, a part of Krones AG, with focus on the dairy and liquid food industry works with its specialized employees on solutions for processing and utilizing valuable raw materials in the best possible way. Milkron is part of the big Krones Processing Group with a network of process engineering companies worldwide and standard components manufacturer for the food industry. From factory planning to designing all components, units and lines, to delivering and installation, to automation and commissioning, Milkron can provide everything you need from a single source. Milkron understands itself as a system integrator who is able to build production lines with own or even third-party equipment to fulfil individual customer requirements.
