Clear Choice for Quinn Glass - Siemens equips new glass plant

With the good results from a previous project as proof of the company’s system and project capabilities, Siemens was a strong contender to equip Quinn Glass’s new Greenfield glass bottle plant at Ince in Great Britain. An experienced project team, glass industry expertise, and a redundant system solution to ensure continuous plant operation were other factors convincing Quinn Glass to choose Siemens and Simatic PCS 7 once again – a decision they have not regretted.

Quinn Glass commenced construction of the new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Ince, Cheshire, in September 2003. This brown-field development is one of only a handful of plants worldwide – and the only one in the UK – that manufacture and fill glass bottles on the same site. Furthermore, the 280 million Pound Sterling investment includes one of the largest automated warehouses in Europe, capable of storing 137,000 pallets of filled and unfilled bottles.

When Quinn Glass sought a supplier for the control systems, the first company it approached was Siemens, as Siemens had recently supplied the equipment for Quinn’s new plant in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, for an investment of this size, a first-class track record was not enough to ensure Siemens’ selection, and Quinn duly considered other suppliers to ensure it was getting the best.

In the end, Quinn decided to use Siemens again. The success of the County Fermanagh project, Siemens’ dedicated team of engineers with knowledge and experience operating in the glass manufacturing industry, the Profibus compatibility, and the redundant architecture of the Siemens systems were ideal for this application with its requirement for exceptionally high plant availability. As those responsible at Quinn Glass said, Siemens was an excellent supplier on the County Fermanagh project, bringing people who really understood glass production and technologies that enabled the tightly integrated control that Quinn needed. For the new Ince plant, the company knew it would be bringing in equipment from all around Europe – Germany and Italy in particular – where Profibus is widely employed, so Profibus compatibility was also an important issue in the selection of a control systems supplier. A key factor, however, was the redundant architecture. Because of the nature of the furnaces and associated equipment, glass manufacturing plants must operate continuously – 24/7/365. Plant availability is therefore paramount, as downtime can be extremely expensive in terms of potential irreparable damage to the plant. When Quinn Glass compared the PCS 7 with alternative systems, it saw that the redundant architecture would provide a major advantage in terms of greater plant reliability.

Quinn also performed a failure analysis on the County Fermanagh plant and realized that redundancy was very important in ensuring plant availability. Consequently, that technological factor, coupled with the experience Siemens has in the glass industry, was decisive for the final choice to go with Siemens. Another factor in the decision was that the control equipment supplier had to be able to engineer and support glass manufacturing control systems throughout the entire plant life cycle. Typical of glass manufacturing facilities, the Ince plant is planned to operate for 20 years or more, yet Quinn Glass’s engineers are confident Siemens will be fully capable of assisting with any necessary maintenance and upgrading of the control system throughout the plant’s life.

The glass container manufacturing plant at Ince has 13 production lines, and the filling hall has five lines. In total there are more than 7,500 I/O plus more than 10,000 more from drives and medium and low-voltage equipment that are brought into the system via profibus. The Simatic PCS 7 system easily handles this level of data.

In the County Fermanagh plant, Simatic PCS 7 controllers had been used at the hot end, but Quinn decided to make wider use of the PCS 7’s flexibility and employ it in both the hot end and the cold end of the new plant, making this installation an example of the horizontal integration enabled by Totally Integrated Automation. Indeed, the Ince plant takes the automation of glass manufacturing and bottle filling to a new level, thanks largely to the versatility and excellent visualization capabilities inherent in the PCS 7.

Furthermore, the Simatic PCS 7’s redundant system architecture provides improved scope for future upgrades, as both hardware and software components can be altered without interrupting production. That precludes the potential for causing damage to furnaces and associated equipment in the hot end, and it means that modifications can be made to the cold end without plant downtime.

Return on Investment

Quinn Glass is very satisfied with the results of the project and is confident it made the right decision in choosing Siemens for the Ince plant. In particular, the company approved of the proactive approach of the Siemens project team, which demonstrates the depth and breadth of Siemens’ experience in this industry. In addition, because it is powerful, scalable, and flexible, the PCS 7 has proved to be an excellent platform on which to base the automation systems.