FoodCereal Extrusion Process

							      Case Study
       Control Solution




                                    Food/Cereal Extrusion Process
                                        Automated Cooking Extrusion Lines

   Extrusion Automation             Project Summary
   BCI AUTOPILOT®                   Kerry Sweet Ingredients supplies a full range of
                                    innovative and value-added ingredients to
                                    key manufacturers in the functional,
Kerry Sweet Ingredients             frozen dessert, cereal, confectionery and
Gardner, KS                         bakery markets. Kerry’s customers are
                                    quite literally the world's biggest and
Kell Wendler                        best-known food manufacturers,
Process Engineer                    retailers and restaurants, so when it
913.780.1212                        needed an extrusion automation system
                                    for its Fremont (NE) plant, the BCI
                                    AUTOPILOT® system from Bachelor
                                                                                                                                           Photo courtesy of Kerry Americas
                                    Controls was the system of choice.

Integrating BCI                     Objectives / Requirements
AUTOPILOT® not only                 Automate and implement an extrusion process for a food/cereal product line, including
allowed us to upgrade the
                                                                                              ®
controls, but brought                   •   Integrate two BCI AUTOPILOT units to control two different extrusion lines
                                                                       ®
about procedures that                   •   Integrate BCI AUTOPILOT into an existing production system, allowing for
improved the operation                      equipment upgrades and other future line changes and improvements
of the machine overall. It              •   Link the extruder formula setup/management
                                            system to legacy systems and device-specific
was almost turnkey. If                                                                            A significant portion of
                                            controls to provide a seamless integration from
we'd used an integrator                     batching through the post-extrusion process           our increased capacity
who was not familiar with               •   Monitor process performance and quality               and throughput on our
extrusion, I would have                                                                                              cereal/direct expanded
been the one developing                                                                                              cereal lines can be
the improvements — not a            Results / Benefits                                                               attributed to the
small task. After seeing            In the end, the BCI AUTOPILOT® integration provided                              integration of the BCI
Bachelor Controls and               successful, measurable results, including                                        AUTOPILOT® automated
BCI AUTOPILOT® in                                                                                                    extrusion control system.
operation, it was a “no                 •   Substantial increase in system throughput on many
                                            products
brainer” to recommend                                                                                                     Jeff Brugger
                                        •   Reduced time requirements for startups and                            Engineering Manager
this upgrade for the rest                   shutdowns resulting in loss reductions and
of our extruders.                           improved scheduling flexibility
                                        •   Enabled electronic collection of processing data to
                     Kell Wendler           drive proactive measures for system optimization
                 Process Engineer                                         • Enhanced preventative maintenance information
                                                                              with simple integration into existing program




                                                                     Photo courtesy of Kerry Americas



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