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Measuresoft Case Study: Cooley Distillery

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Cooley Distillery - Ireland
Company Profile

Cooley Distillery is the only Irish-owned independent Irish Whiskey distillery. Apart from well-known brands such as Tyrconnell and Kilbeggan Cooley provides a full range of Irish whiskeys to 23 of the top 25 retailers in Europe. Cooley also distils quality whiskeys such as Knappoque, Clontarf, Brennans and Hennessy for international drinks companies. In addition Cooley supplies whiskey to over 40 Irish firms as an ingredient in products such as cream liqueurs, candy, cakes and other foodstuffs. The impact of Cooley on the Irish whiskey industry has been significant. Competition is a spur to improvement. Consumers now have a growing choice of products. As a result Irish whiskey is the fastest growing brown spirit category in the world.  

Situation

Cooley were in the process of upgrading their manufacturing equipment. The existing process monitoring system was felt to be out-of-date and lacking scalability as the plant expands. A new solution was required to replace the existing system. The solution would have to flexible enough to run in parallel with the legacy system for verification purposes. Integration with 3rd party applications was also a requirement as were. In addition Cooley required alarms and data logging functionality.

Solution

Measuresoft, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, proposed and implemented a SCADA solution based on its ScadaPro product running on the Microsoft Windows 2000 platform. Measuresoft carried out an audit and documented the existing hardware. The system was integrated with the existing Texas Instruments 545 PLC network (also known as the Siemens SIMATIC 545 PLC). Various instruments such as flow meters and valves are used to acquire data.

  • Cooley Distillery now have a production monitoring system that has the following features:
  • Real-time production summary screens with the ability to write process setpoints.
  • Parallel running with legacy systems.
  • Report formats consistent with legacy systems.
  • Real-time alarm reporting and trending.
  • Data logging of production processes.
Benefits

There are many benefits to the ScadaPro solution:

  • The system provides Cooley with ability to tune its manufacturing process.

  • The standards based solution provides for extensibility as the plant expands.

  • The ScadaPro solution provides Cooley with very important production, quality, and maintenance information.

  • The data produced assists in the quality assurance process.

  • The data logging features provide an archive of results for traceability purposes and aids preventative maintenance.

  • The alarm system provides an early warning system for any process failures.

  • Leveraging the Microsoft platform provides a solution that is accessible throughout the corporate network.

  • Operator familiarity with the Windows user interface, and report formats consistent with legacy systems reduce training costs.