CarbonLITE closes gaps in a PET recycling facility

Problem
CarbonLITE opened its 220,000-square-foot, bottle-to-bottle PET recycling facility in Riverside, California, in 2012. It incorporates packaged systems from more than 10 different manufacturers, each of which used different PLCs, different local HMIs, and different communication protocols. Trimax provided the controls for one of the packaged systems and displayed the process in Ignition on a local industrial PC.

In the opening months of the Riverside facility, the operations staff was greatly augmented to make up for the lack of centralized control and monitoring. Operators would communicate over radio to other areas of the building to have other operators relay data from a remote display on another process. The operation of the system was automated, but the visibility and ease of use were never implemented.

Solution
Trimax and several other vendors recommended that CarbonLITE install a SCADA system to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the plant. Many softwares were considered, but CarbonLITE had already been swayed to Ignition after using the software in one area of its plant. Trimax received the contract to integrate all the various processes, devices, communication protocols, and plant information into one SCADA system. Trimax successfully completed the system and delivered a solution that is used by the plant floor, office personnel, and corporate executives. CarbonLITE consistently uses the system for monitoring, trending, remote access, alarm notification, and troubleshooting.

Result
The next objective is to integrate downtime, OEE, and possibly track-and-trace features into the system. CarbonLite would greatly benefit from these proposed upgrades.