Perrigo1

Wet Process Control System

The process areas were fully automated to ensure proper ingredient tracking, ingredient distribution and ingredient batching.

Challenge

Perrigo (formerly Wyeth Nutritionals) manufactures infant formula products, adhering to pharmaceutical standards. The facility was upgrading their control system for the production of infant formula. The requirements of the project included control of four areas of the wet process system; Material Receiving, Fat Blending, Liquefying and Compounding. In total, these areas contained all processes required to produce a liquid infant nutritional mix to be passed on to the dryer systems for conversion to a marketable powder form.

Solution

Hallam-ICS was hired to provide control system design, PLC/HMI programming, custom software development, system commissioning, documentation and training. The four process areas were fully automated to ensure proper ingredient tracking, ingredient distribution and ingredient batching. The control system consisted of a new Allen-Bradley PLC-5, multiple Intellution FIX32 nodes and a Microsoft Access relational database. Material receiving, distribution and batching are initiated by a custom database application and user interface. Intellution’s Easy Database Access (EDA) was utilized to incorporate and log process events and parameters to the custom database application and to automatically print batch reports for each phase of the process.

Results

Our team accomplished the following:

  • Comprehensive System Automation: Fully automated four critical wet process areas—Material Receiving, Fat Blending, Liquefying, and Compounding—ensuring precise ingredient tracking, distribution, and batching for infant formula production.
  • Custom Database Integration: Developed a user-friendly database application with Intellution FIX32 and Easy Database Access for real-time process event logging, parameter tracking, and automatic batch report generation.
  • Seamless Commissioning and Training: Delivered complete system design, PLC/HMI programming, commissioning, and operator training, enabling efficient operations and adherence to pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing standards.