Miller Magazine Issue 137 May 2021

72 COVER STORY MILLER / may 2021 system is highly customizable to suit the individual needs of customers whether they use Bühler or non-Bühler equip- ment. Some customers add facility management to the sys- tem. For example, a job card can be created to schedule changing the office air conditioning filters. SUCCESSFUL AUDITS The benefits of ProPlant are significant in terms of in- creased plant availability but also in terms of how custom- er and agency audits are run. Customers and official food safety agencies have a vested interested in ensuring that food processing companies adhere to standards. Once a year, Siemer Milling Company opens its doors to BRC (Brit- ish Retail Consortium) auditors. In between these visits the company’s national and international customers also send their own teams of experts to thoroughly scrutinize the mill- ing operation. Audits are an essential part of safeguarding quality within the milling industry. Achieving a good rating is important. “Customers demand excellent ratings as they depend on safe and high-quality produce to keep up their own stan- dards,” says Maheshwari. “We are proud to have prime rat- ings at Siemer Milling Company.” The BRC auditing process used to take two days, but ev- ery year new areas have been added. Currently an audit takes over two days. All the managers are involved as well as the food safety team – a significant effort in terms of time and manpower. Customer audits are shorter but still take a whole day. “The deployment of ProPlant has made a huge differ- ence to how we conduct audits. The visiting auditors were visibly impressed and complimented us on the system. It significantly speeds up the entire auditing process,” says Maheshwari. ProPlant displays the complete history of an individual machine or processing line making the audit more trans- parent and easier for auditors and in house teams alike. “It’s very user-friendly, with just three clicks all the relevant information is there, right on the screen before us,” says Maheshwari. “Auditors require a complete and detailed picture. With ProPlant we can prove that we not only talk the talk but walk the walk. Operating with such detail and seamless control over every aspect of our processes with- out software as potent as ProPlant would be unthinkable.” PUSHING FOR FURTHER DIGITALIZATION Siemer Milling Company currently uses ProPlant for its milling equipment tasks and auditing requirements as well as for calibrating its milling scales. Some of the equipment is from Bühler, other machinery is from other suppliers. But regardless of the manufacturer, ProPlant is able to track all sanitation tasks and documentation as well as employee time spent on specified tasks. “Pressure to implement the system successfully was strong as we urgently needed to make our lives easier. And we succeeded. However, there are still areas which haven’t been integrated into the system. There are just so many ideas where we can make improvements,” says Mahesh- wari. This is the next step to further improve efficiency and utilize the system’s full potential, for example, by process- ing data from other areas of the business. “We would like to include data on our trucks, our forklifts and other equip- ment. Ideally, we would use the system as a one-stop shop solution that can handle all our maintenance management requirements,” says Maheshwari. The Bühler team is already working on improvements and upgrading the software, with the vision of one day pushing the development towards predictive maintenance via the intermediate step called conditionbased mainte- nance, where decisions about maintenance are based on the actual condition of the equipment. For Roman Inauen, Business Development Manager, Milling Solutions, there are several key elements in this process: “To move one level up from preventive to predictive maintenance we use both historical and live sensor data from machinery and en- tire plants to make accurate predictions about the status of equipment. This enables us to comprehensively plan the exchange of parts before costly breakdowns occur. The other key element of this is connectivity.” For Maheshwari and his colleagues at Siemer Milling Company, the potential is huge. “We are keen to build on what we have already achieved with ProPlant,” he says. “Collaborating with Bühler team has been very rewarding.”