A General Mills’ plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—primarily responsible for the
Cheerios brand—was experiencing costly, unexpected downtime incidents. During the
extrusion process, a split-second interruption can trip the auger drive, causing the cereal
to harden, destroying the product and clogging the die. A full day of downtime is often
required to clean the hardened cereal, reset the line and replace the product, with obvious
ramifications for productivity and profitability.
By monitoring the lines and the power that supplied them, General Mills successfully
pinpointed voltage sags as the cause of these costly incidents. A back-up generator
was under consideration when our DySC
battery-free UPS came to their attention.
Installation began with a pilot program: a ProDySC
backing up a single cereal line. Soon thereafter, a tornado hit the area.
One by one, the plant’s lines went down—except for the DySC-backed line, which
kept on running. In fact, at the height of the storm, the line operators had to shut down
the line manually so personnel could take cover!
After this impressive demonstration, ProDySCs
were installed to provide line protection to the cereal and Fruit Roll-Up brand lines,
and a MegaDySC
was added to protect the balance of the facility.
General Mills reports that DySC technology
prevents voltage sags from hampering their operations an average of 12 times a year.
With monitoring systems confirming that voltage sags accounted for 70% of unplanned downtime,
this translates to a tremendous gain in productivity—so much so that two additional
General Mills plants now use DySC to protect their operations.
|
