September 1, 2021

Royal Canin (RC), a hybrid manufacturer of dog and cat food has experimented with Fortech’s Manufacturing Execution System for nearly a year.

Fortech installed its MES platform on a pilot line in the northern region of France. IT engineer Patrick Fovez and his team at Royal Canin was the first plant in the RC network to improve its line efficiency with Fortech’s MES platform.

“Many of our PLCs were antiquated and did not have the depth to properly capture the data we needed,” explained Gary DeCerf of the French manufacturing plant. “Once we were able to overcome the PLC difficulty, the process was pretty smooth sailing,” he added.

Fortech controls expert Shanon Shoffstal played a dual role in guiding the integration of the PLCs along with Mike Iyoha who spearheaded the integration of four MES components – Line Event Data System, Downtime Viewer, CenterLine and the critical preventive maintenance component – Clean, Inspect and Lubrication.

While these four “mainstay” components of Fortech’s manu-FACT MES Platform provide significant results, Royal Canin management hopes to experiment and eventually take advantage of several other MES components.

Of significant note, due to the COVID 19 virus, the integration of PLCs and the manu-FACT MES platform was completed remotely saving time and significant travel expense.

Training was also conducted on a remote basis and the Royal Canin team has set high expectations for line efficiency due to this pilot line project.

Royal Canin is a world-wide leader in pet nutrition, experimentation and manufacturing of high end, healthy food for the dog and feline populations around the globe.