A Recipe For Success at Barilla - RECIPES FROM THE WORLD OVER

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TOPIC: A Recipe For Success at Barilla

fdibartolo

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Date: Dec 11, 2008

A Recipe For Success at Barilla	Permalink

Since 1877, when Pietro Barilla opened his small pasta and bread shop in Parma, Italy, an entrepreneurial spirit has been the key ingredient to the growth of the Barilla pasta company. Their recipe for success is to combine challenging work with the best technical expertise available in a safe and sanitary environment. Barilla's plant engineering and design goals made it an ideal opportunity for METTLER TOLEDO product inspection technology. The combination of Hi-Speed checkweighing and Safeline metal detection has been part of this success story since the first Barilla plant opened in Ames, Iowa in 1996. The Barilla plant in Iowa has a capacity to produce 150,000 tons of pasta annually. Running inside are five Hi-Speed checkweighers with Safeline metal detectors on every line. Barilla was already the world's largest pasta manufacturer when they entered the U.S. market. Focusing on their Italian heritage, the companys traditional product sold very well and their new whole-grain pastas are popular in North America as well. By 2005, the 420,000 square-foot Ames , Iowa plant reached maximum capacity and the company needed to expand, or build a second plant. Analysis showed that building a new plant in the Northeast would save the company millions of dollars in distribution costs. The site chosen for the new plant was Avon, New York just an hours drive from Hi-Speed's headquarters. The new Barilla plant was designed to be state-of-the-art. Work flow was a major consideration, says John Davlin, manager-engineering. The last decade has seen major advances in the use of data to help improve productivity and control costs. Davlin, an electronics engineer, recognized the benefits of choosing equipment that could interface easily with the automation infrastructure of the new plant, standardized on Rockwells Contrologix PLC. We must have five different types of PLCs in Ames, and the maintenance and training costs are huge. The goal is centralized data management and to reduce the number of PLCs to one. We knew Hi-Speeds Ethernet/IP fieldbus interfaced with Rockwell. Reliability, ease and predictability of maintenance, accuracy and data output requirements drove the decision process when selecting equipment for the new Avon plant," says John Davlin. Hi-Speeds field engineers were on site to help install equipment and commission the five Cornerstone checkweighers. One of the things I like about Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed checkweighers is that they hold their accuracy after theyre set. says Devlin. An equal number of Safeline metal detectors went online in the new Avon plant. Plans are to add three more production lines to the new plant and equip them all with Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed checkweighers and Safeline metal detectors. Mettler-Toledo meets Barillas goals for a robust, easy to maintain and user-friendly product inspection equipment. To learn more about the PowerPhasePLUS RB metal detector, please visit www.mt.com/hi-speed To contact Mettler Toledo, please visit www.mt.com/contact -- Edited by fdibartolo at 17:19, 2008-12-11 __________________

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