CPG Company

A fast-growing maker of eco-friendly cleaning products had scaled from a single store to tens of thousands of retail locations across four continents in under 15 years — entirely through outsourced manufacturing. To meet rising consumer demand and consolidate its dispersed operations, the company committed to its first in-house production facility. The challenge was acute: the initial production launch date was set less than a year after groundbreaking. This compressed timeline required a process control system that could be deployed and commissioned rapidly, support staged implementation, and accommodate significant future expansion — all without sacrificing reliability on day one.

Grantek Systems, a Rockwell Automation Solution Partner, led deployment of the PlantPAx Modern Distributed Control System (DCS) to manage six bulk supply tanks, five mixing tanks, and the filling and packaging line. A staged implementation approach was agreed upon from the outset: the system was first configured for a mix of manual and automated operation to meet the launch date, with full automation completed post-launch. Rockwell Automation's library of pre-configured process objects — including embedded controller code, display elements, and faceplates for Endress+Hauser flow meters — simplified device configuration. The PlantPAx alarm builder tool automated alarm creation across the system. Pre-allocated tags were built into the architecture to enable a future switchover to FactoryTalk Batch automation without rework.

The facility met its target launch date and began production on schedule with single-shift, single-batch runs. Key time savings during deployment and commissioning included:

• ~2 days saved on programming time through pre-configured flow meter objects, eliminating manual low-level code wrapping
• ~1 week saved on alarm configuration using the PlantPAx alarm builder tool — a task that would otherwise have required manual message creation for every device object
• Overall deployment and commissioning time reduced by more than a week compared to conventional configuration approaches

Post-launch, the first mixing tank was automated in five weeks; the remaining four tanks were duplicated and commissioned in just two additional weeks due to identical equipment phases and logic reuse.

• Staged implementation reduces launch risk: Configuring for manual-first operation allowed production to start on deadline without waiting for full automation — a practical model for greenfield facilities under time pressure.
• Pre-configured object libraries compound savings: Each reusable process object eliminates hours of low-level programming; across a multi-tank installation, this adds up to days or weeks recovered.
• Design for duplication from the start: Identical equipment phases and user-defined data types across mixing tanks compressed a five-week automation effort for tank one into two weeks for the remaining four combined.
• Plan future integrations at architecture stage: Pre-allocating FactoryTalk Batch tags during initial build made the manual-to-automated switchover a configuration change, not a rework.