Barry Callebaut Prevents Downtime by Applying Wi-care™ Solutions

Tight Schedules and Breakdowns: A Major Challenge

The chocolate processing industry is subject to a tight flow: when customers place an order, they expect it for the next day. The schedule is very tight: “The trucks are waiting outside the gate,” explains Philippe Beringuet, reliability manager at the Louviers site. But every breakdown disrupts this perfectly oiled schedule and impacts all production sectors.

At the Barry Callebaut site in Louviers, which employs 350 people, there
are about 4,000 assets, which have complex processes and are divided between “solid” and “liquid” streams. “It was important to have complete control of our installations and to be sure of their reliability. We also needed to establish preventive maintenance plans.

The objective? To no longer suffer breakdowns and have an overview of the health of each machine, which impacts the entire production chain in case of failure” continues Ph. Beringuet.

A Data-Driven Approach to Prevent Breakdowns

It was the accuracy of I-care’s diagnosis that convinced Barry Callebaut Louviers to work with them. Philippe Beringuet : “I contacted I-care when our strategic machines broke down. I sent them a sketch and we started renting Wi-care sensors. We were then able to monitor the engine of a machine and to maintain it in good condition until its programmed technical stop. We replaced the engine: the production was not impacted and we didn’t have any breakdowns.” Laurent Lesnard, branch manager at I-care, explains : “We went to the Louviers site and we collected and managed all the relevant data thanks to our I-care sensors and solutions. We were then able to analyze the data and the cause of the breakdown.

Thanks to this in-depth analysis and our diagnosis, we were able to implement, together with the client, sustainable solutions to make their equipment more reliable”.

This solution is called Wi-care, these wireless sensors that take vibration and temperature measurements of the machines and send the data to the I-see platform. This cloud-based platform notifies both I-care and the client when the amplitudes are too high.

With complex processes such as those used at Barry Callebaut, it was important to have simple equipment. And that’s the strength of I-care: equipment that is non-intrusive and very easy to understand and use. “Sometimes the environment is the problem, when someone unplugs a cable, for example. It never happens with I-care machines”. Defects are immediately detected and the company can work independently without having to contact I-care. The reliability manager hopes to organize a training course on vibration analysis for 2 to 4 of his employees in the near future. In addition to the equipment, a genuine technical partnership has been established with I-care. Philippe Beringuet: “I regularly call on I-care for technical studies and we think about new mechanisms together.

For example, we had no idea which machines we were greasing. We realized that there were 320 machines that never saw any grease! So, we made a lubrication plan to improve the health of our assets and processes”. Preventive maintenance plans were also drawn up with I-care whenever there was a failure on a machine.

Enhanced Reliability and Optimized Maintenance

Thanks to the collaboration with I-care, Barry Callebaut’s Louviers site has made many of its machines more reliable. For example, the company has avoided 30 hours of downtime on its cacao grinders. When you know that one hour of downtime is equivalent to €5,000, you can understand the value of the I-care equipment!

Spare parts have also been optimized. In the case of the rotating machine, working with I-care has resulted in a much longer service life for the Thouet gearboxes: 2 years instead of 3 months.

Between now (2019) and 2021, 50 Wi-care sensors will be installed on machines at the Louviers site, particularly on the roasters, which in a way are the diamonds on the production lines.