Anonymous Fortune 500 Food Manufacturer (via Kirby Risk Corporation)

A Fortune 500 packaged foods company operating more than 40 manufacturing facilities across the US faced a persistent operational vulnerability: its safety systems offered no diagnostic visibility when faults occurred. On two refrigerated whipping topping case packing lines, tongue interlock door switches and e-stops were wired in series to a safety relay — a conventional architecture that made fault isolation extremely difficult. When a single downtime event struck, the maintenance team was forced to manually walk and inspect long wiring runs to locate the fault. That single incident kept one packing line offline for more than 70 hours, a costly outcome in a high-throughput food production environment where unplanned stops ripple through chilled supply chains.

Kirby Risk Corporation, a long-standing Rockwell Automation distributor, collaborated with the manufacturer's project engineer to replace the legacy hardwired safety architecture with Allen-Bradley GuardLink device-level safety linking technology. SensaGuard non-contact safety interlock switches and e-stops were connected to Dual GuardLink safety relays using GuardLink Smart Tags, which transmit door status and granular diagnostic data to a ControlLogix PLC via a Guardmaster EtherNet/IP Network Interface. This topology surfaces real-time fault information — including the specific device that tripped — directly on the HMI, eliminating manual walks of the production floor. Rockwell Automation Safety Services conducted a risk assessment and provided safety improvement recommendations, while Rockwell's Safety Automation Builder streamlined system design and SISTEMA was used to verify performance levels. The upgrade was scoped to the case packing lines and designed to align with the company's broader smart manufacturing roadmap.

The GuardLink implementation delivered measurable, immediate impact across safety, maintenance, and cost metrics:

• 75% reduction in average unplanned downtime, the headline outcome driven by faster fault identification at the HMI
• 50% reduction in preventive maintenance time, as technicians no longer need to manually inspect every device in a series circuit
• $70,000/year in ongoing cost savings from combined downtime and maintenance reductions
• 61% faster installation per case packer compared to traditional hardwired safety wiring, minimizing disruption during the upgrade itself

Beyond the numbers, the project shifted the maintenance team from reactive, walk-and-find troubleshooting to a diagnostics-driven workflow — a meaningful change in how the facility manages safety events.

• Legacy series-wired safety circuits create diagnostic blind spots; networked safety architectures that expose device-level data at the HMI can dramatically compress mean time to repair.
• Installation efficiency compounds ROI — 61% faster wiring per machine reduces both upgrade downtime and labor cost, accelerating payback.
• A trusted distributor acting as a safety consultant — not just a product supplier — added value by steering the customer from a simpler switch swap toward a higher-impact architecture.
• Safety investments should be evaluated on operational economics, not just compliance: $70K/year in savings makes the business case straightforward.
• Integrate safety diagnostics with existing PLC and HMI infrastructure rather than standalone systems to enable operator visibility without additional tooling.