Transform your food processing operations with the PlantPAx distributed control system

In the dynamic world of food and beverage production, the need for efficient, reliable, scalable and secure control systems is paramount. This requires a modern distributed control system (DCS) that utilises a common automation platform for seamless integration between critical process areas and the balance of your plant.

PlantPAx connects process, discrete power information and safety into one plantwide infrastructure, increasing efficiency and productivity across all layers of your operations. This eliminates disparate control systems, optimises processes and helps reduce your total cost of ownership.

As the exclusive distributor of PlantPAx in Australia and New Zealand, NHP brings over 50 years of local expertise to ensure seamless implementation and reliable, ongoing support for your operations.

What is PlantPAx?

PlantPAx® by Rockwell Automation is a modern DCS that helps you make faster, better-informed production decisions and respond quickly to the demands of your customers’ changing requirements.

By implementing PlantPAx, as an integral part of your digital transformation strategy, your system will be more productive and profitable, while reducing design, engineering and operational risk. With NHP's dedicated support as the sole distributor of the product range in Australia and New Zealand, you’ll gain access to localised expertise, ensuring a smoother and more efficient deployment of PlantPAx in your operations.

Key features and benefits for food processing:

• Seamless integration: PlantPAx takes advantage of Rockwell Automation’s premier integration, so all parts of your plant become integrated at every level of your operation, from the plant floor to the control room, ensuring all processes, from ingredient handling to packaging, are streamlined and efficient.
• Enhanced productivity: With intuitive configuration tools and pre-built solutions, PlantPAx helps reduce engineering time and costs, allowing your team to focus on optimising production processes and maintaining high standards of food quality. NHP’s support also ensures that your team can quickly deploy PlantPAx, maximising productivity without delays.
• Scalability and flexibility: PlantPAx is designed to scale with your operations. Whether you are managing a small artisanal food production facility or a large-scale industrial plant, the system can be tailored to fit your specific needs. This flexibility is crucial in the food and beverage industry, where operations and production requirements can vary significantly in size and complexity.
• Real-time insights: The system provides real-time data and analytics, enabling better decision-making and process optimisation. Real-time monitoring will help maintain product quality and reduce waste.
• Cybersecurity: PlantPAx includes robust cybersecurity features to protect against cyber threats, ensuring the safety and reliability of your operations. This is especially important in sectors with critical infrastructure, where protecting sensitive data and production continuity is critical.

Applications for food processing:

• Ingredient handling: PlantPAx helps manage the precise handling and mixing of ingredients, ensuring consistency and quality in your products.
• Production line optimisation: The system’s real-time monitoring capabilities allow for continuous improvement of production lines, reducing downtime and increasing throughput.
• Packaging and labelling: PlantPAx integrates with packaging and labelling systems to ensure accuracy and compliance with industry standards.
• Quality control: With real-time data and analytics, PlantPAx supports rigorous quality control processes, helping to maintain high standards of food safety and product quality.

Improve your productivity and profitability, reduce your risk

PlantPAx extends on the benefits of Rockwell Automation’s standard portfolio to bring process functionality native to controllers, cybersecure architectures and improved availability, supporting the lifecycle needs of plant operations in a variety of industries.

• Robust architectures: Process built controllers extend the Logix family with cutting-edge processing power and the capacity to reduce the complexity of PlantPAx architectures. Our approach to process control creates a unified experience from skid to plant to multi-site, which reduces the total cost of ownership throughout the lifecycle of your system.
• Project consistency: With native process instructions embedded in the controller firmware, project teams can adopt approaches to control strategies that drive consistency for your projects. A consistent approach simplifies the lifecycle management of deployed systems as teams modernise their automation infrastructure.
• Streamlined workflows: With improved design and operational user experience, development teams realise savings in the configuration of instrumentation, alarms and diagnostic system elements. Operators have the extended ability to view underlying control logic in a safer and secure manner. Maintenance teams will have improved workflows for system troubleshooting to reduce downtime.
• TUV-certified for cybersecurity: To operate at peak performance and minimise cybersecurity threats, PlantPAx system architectures are TÜV certified to the international standard ISA-99/IEC 62443-3-3, which provides guidance on the implementation of an electronically secured system.
• Analytics enabled: Analytics is essential to realise profit in process operations. PlantPAx DCS has purpose-built frameworks that easily connect live and historical data from the DCS into reporting and analytical tools. Frameworks enable extended experiences, such as augmented reality, using workflows aligned with process strategies controlling plant operations. Our system allows you to adopt a scalable analytics strategy by leveraging predictive and prescriptive models for process applications such as soft sensors, anomaly detection, or model predictive control. This provides your team with the digital transformation opportunity to improve uptime, reduce waste, and drive overall profitability.
• Integrates process and electrical power: This DCS allows for improved asset management decisions and problem resolution, enabled by a system architecture that integrates electrical protection devices using either IEC 61850 or Ethernet/IP protocols.

The PlantPAx distributed control system by Rockwell Automation is a powerful tool for modernising and optimising process industries. Its seamless integration, enhanced productivity, scalability, real-time insights, and robust cybersecurity make it an ideal choice for the food and beverage industry.

With NHP as your trusted partner and exclusive distributor of these products in Australia and New Zealand, and a strong ecosystem of Rockwell certified System Integrators, you will gain local expertise and support to ensure that your PlantPAx implementation meets all your needs and helps you achieve greater efficiency, reliability, and profitability in your operations.

For further information on PlantPAx and other automation products, please visit NHP Electrical Engineering Products - PlantPAx.