October 14, 2015
Intelligent automation – the final frontier. People make mistakes. But when people in feed mills make mistakes, the results are always costly. It’s just a matter of degree. As feed mills move toward an ever-higher level of automation, people are being taken out of the equation. Facilities have begun operating with almost no direct labor, aside from people who maintain equipment and manage through uncommon situations that may arise. Those people aren’t in the mill monitoring equipment. They’ve shut off the lights and left, returning only if needed to fix equipment or perform normal maintenance. This is “lights-out” automation, the final frontier in process automation. Lights-out is automation to the fullest possible level. When you’re at lights out, your plant floor operates on its own, maintaining the established level of product quality and preventing product waste. No one has to hover over equipment, watching for problems that might arise. Although […]