Plant

The company Glasspack S.p.A. of Danone Group installed a complex plant in their own French headquarters for the paletizzation of glass bottles, that was developed by Zecchetti company using Automa's Super-Flash in order to guarantee security and efficiency.

By Elena Bertillo - Luca Rossi
Since 1960 the Zecchetti company is developing plants for the paletizzation of containers made of PET or glass. Nowadays, thanks to more than 3,000 installations done, the company that works in the food and beverage sector since 1960 is able to offer turn-key systems for packing and transporting the desidered containers: from the handling of goods in the production section to the creation of pallets for delivery.
One of the most important installations for the packing of bottles concerns the plant installed in BSN Glasspack company, an European leader in the production of glass containers for food, which chose to automize the last part of the production cycle in order to reduce time costs on packing and guarantee the integrity of the final product, as well as the absence of pollution agents. The system was installed in the French laboratories located in Bordeaux and is composed in various parts: three transport lines to send the final product from the hotter zone, where the bottle is being physically produced to a colder zone where the final product is being packed; two machines for paletizzation: they positionate the containers on pallets in the best efficient way; one cleaning device that eliminates eventual remaining detritus by breathing in and out from inside the bottles in order to assure the purity.

Detail plant

Flexible and Reliable
The SEW engines present in the machines are asynchronous and permit to control the system speed securely, assuring an elevated reliability. Moreover the transport lines used for the bottles are accompanied by Movimot (inverter aboard) and MQP (intelligent module) with which is possible to structure the system, allowing it to react locally with a selector in case of an eventual anomaly on a field bus, in order to exclude the part of the plant in warning. Thanks to the field architecture based on ProfiBus, the PLCs are able to manage the information and data needed for the automation, such as the speed data which passes to the engines.
The characteristics of the plant are the high flexibility and modularity that permit to settle the logistic lines according to customer needs; easy to use thanks to an user-friendly supervision software; the possibility to maintain the plant remotely and finally an elevated life-time.
The electrical panel and the Schneider PlCs are connected between them through an ethernet network. The PLCs also communicate with the PCs equipped with Applicom PCI2000ETH cards through an ethernet netwok.

Supervisione Libera
In each PC is installed a supervision application that controls a specified part of the plant and that was developed by Zecchetti company through the use of standard procedures. Those supervision applications permit to obtain a quick diagnostic of warning situations - also thanks to the presence of digital photos - and to control operations manually and/or in an automatic way, as well as the format changes through the use of recipe management. The software manages various access levels: various functionalities may be activated or not according to the user and can be completely modified.

Main screen

In case of failure in the supervisor PC, it is always possible to replace it without reinstalling all the applications because the PLC is just the only one that permits to visualize the pages of the interested part of the plant through the use of an appropriate code system.

Diagnostic screen

The SCADA used is Automa's Super-Flash, the one considered by Azzali Elettronica (consultor in automation and technical support in software development) as the unique to guarantee an elevated reliability and flexibility. Thanks to Automa's development system and the use of Applicom cards installed on each PC, Zecchetti company is able to guarantee efficiently technical support 24 hours a day, ensuring customers regarding remote interventions in any automated part of the plant.