Food & Beverage Industry
Whether your goal is to increase throughput, elevate quality control, enhance traceability, protect the brand image and consistency, reduce recalls, improve personnel safety, or all of the above, we can help.
Today's technology offers innovative solutions for the food & beverage industry and industrial process control issues. Whether it's sorting, filling, forming, packing, or inspecting, our product can help you address your unique challenges head on.
Frito Lay partners with Douglas Machines to provide high quality automated packaging solutions for the salty chip division. Douglas specializes in the design and manufacture of case and tray packers, shrink wrap systems, cartoners, sleevers, variety pack systems and palletizers. We are proud to partner with Douglas to provide our Smart 9.7" HMI to bagging machines for Frito Lay/Pepsi Co.
Here are just a few of the Food & Beverage OEMs, Machine Builders, and Manufacturers that use our products:
Every Harvest Right Freeze Dryer has been designed, engineered and hand-assembled with care. They spent four years designing and engineering this product to roll out to the world and use our 4.3" Compact HMI as the display of choice. This product is built to last and can preserve the foods you and your family will love for years to come. Watch a video about a Harvest Freeze Dryer with a Maple HMI .
Automated Dairy started its own research and development division where they manufactured a proprietary automated dairy system called TURBOWASH. They decided on a 9.7" HMI to work with the PLC allowing total access to all a dairy’s daily milking functions, ensuring consistency and proactive control in milking. Reduce labor, increase throughput. Watch an Automated Dairy customer talk about the TURBOWASH and see our HMI in action.
Cetec Cereal Technologies serves the cereal milling and food processing industries. When Cetec decided to pursue the development of its own range of specialized process equipment such as the highly regarded HTX Grain Heater and the revolutionary Hydromax Flour Hydrator they decided on Maple HMIs as their go-to operator display. Cetec provides a complete range of services to their customers, check out their website to see how they use a Maple HMI.
“Value, Great Support, Ease of Operation, Value Added – great website, training, stock on hand, and Innovation… makes Maple Systems one of E-PAK Machinery Inc. best partners.”
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Enhance Traceability
Improved traceability provides valuable data.
The ability to track products from end-to-end is critical in the food and beverage industry. Automation significantly improves traceability which means a product can be readily tracked from its source, through processing and distribution, until it reaches the shelf for consumers. If a problem is detected with a batch of products, the shipment can be located and retrieved, avoiding potential issues. Improved traceability provides valuable data that allows manufacturers to ensure regulatory compliance and cut down on the cost of compliance. This data also allows for trouble-shooting and identification of issues along the supply chain – allowing for continuous improvement and enhancing overall quality, safety, and profitability.
Elevate Quality Control
Automation provides manufacturers with consistency.
The food and beverage industry demands excellent quality control in order to provide safe products and preserve the brand reputation. By reducing the potential for human error and allowing early identification of potential issues, automation increases the reproducibility of production and helps ensure the final product does not vary – or more concisely put, automation improves quality control! Consistency is crucial for the food and beverage industry since customers want to buy the same product over and over again and for it to consistently have the same texture, flavor, taste, and other characteristics. Automation provides manufacturers with consistency, thus, protecting the brand’s reputation.
FDA and Other Regulations
Increase efficiency, improve traceability, and protect the brand’s reputation.
Manufacturers across all industries are under constant pressure to increase profits while reducing costs. In addition, the food and beverage industry is under pressure to comply with FDA and other regulations that ensure food safety and quality. Automation is a clear solution to relieve these pressures as automated processes are proven to increase efficiency, improve traceability, and protect the brand’s reputation – all while complying with the requisite regulations. A Maple Industrial Panel or Box PC paired with our SCADA software, Aveva Edge, can create applications that are 21 CFR Part 11 compliant. Track change over and other data in a SQL database for future inspection.
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Automated processes can work 24/7 with occasional outages for maintenance, which is clearly faster than human operators can perform. For this reason, increased efficiency and higher through-put rates are two of the biggest benefits of automation in the food and beverage industry. In addition to elevated efficiency, automation also allows companies to collect valuable data from the production line that can be used to improve maintenance. Predictive maintenance is a new approach to maintenance where real-time data is used to identify potential issues and alert when maintenance is needed – further reducing costs as well as production downtimes.
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Maple Systems can serve as your guide, making it an easy process to join the next evolution of automated control. Maple Systems HMIs, Gateways, and Industrial PCs are your gateway to the IIoT. Our products are an access point enabling operating equipment in the field or on the plant floor to connect to information technologies of the World Wide Web, databases, smart phones, analytic software, and more. Achieve better access to invaluable data and open up a world of possibilities for your business
- Email notifications for alarms and data backups
- Remote access/monitoring/control functionality
- Data logging for more informed decision making
- Enhanced network security thanks to physically separate dual Ethernet ports
Connectivity
Connect the Hardware using a Protocol you Know
Free EBPro Programming Software provides easy integration with built-in drivers for over 300 PLCs, including drivers for Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Emerson, Omron, and Panasonic.
Industrial Panel PCs
Capacitive, High Brightness, Stainless Steel, and Wi-Fi options to choose from
To effectively and efficiently monitor packaging operations, the need for auto adjustments, and timely and accurate data is critical. You need reliable, current, and historical information to make critical business decisions. As safety and environmental concerns continue to increase, the ability to remotely monitor your facilities and equipment, and quickly make adjustments becomes increasingly important.
We have hundreds of configuration options to choose from:
- 11 Screen Sizes, 7”-21.5”
- 6 Intel CPUs
- 4-32GB Memory
- 32GB -512GB SSD
- Optional Wi-Fi Expansion Kit
- Microsoft Windows OS
If you don't need a display, we offer Industrial Box PCs. Customize your configuration, including Wi-Fi and Raid support options available.
For over 20 years we have proudly partnered with Indusoft Web Studio, now Aveva, as our SCADA software provider. With its powerful development tools that enable you to create supervisory applications that operate on multiple operating system platforms. Create your project using features such as animated screens, alarms, trends, scripting, recipes & reports, and schedule tasks. This software offers the power to create exactly what you want, the way you want it, including 21 CFR Part 11 compliant.
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Smart IIoT HMIs
MQTT, OPC UA, Sparkplug B, Ignition, SQL Databases
These loT products are designed to meet the expanding need for new ways to connect to equipment, while still preserving the core function of a fixed operator terminal. Operators are free to remotely monitor and control equipment with any smart/mobile device, from anywhere in the world.
Data is an extremely valuable resource that creates immense opportunities for growth and increased profitability. For food and beverage companies, the challenge is to efficiently collect, analyze, and visualize masses of data from SCADA systems, terminals, facilities and safety systems. This data, in turn, supports operational insight and business value—all while improving return on investment.
These controllers with displays range in size from 4.3”, 7.0”, to 10.2”. I/O modules offer digital inputs and outputs, with analog I/O as well. Our HMI+PLC models are ideal for harsh locations with their Class I, Div 2 rating.
HMI + PLCs
Class I, Division 2
Our HMC series combines a Touch Screen HMI and PLC all in one unit. Utilized worldwide to employ diverse applications, our HMI PLCs lower costs, save space, and feature options including: Serial and Ethernet communication, support for Class I, Division 2 installations, and numerous I/O configurations.
HMI PLCs provide an affordable combination of display and control in a single package and programmed by using our MAPware7000 software, which allows you to have web server functionality, data logging, recipes, graphs, alarms, trending, create objects with multiple tasks, and more.
You can use serial and ethernet communication to remote access via Modbus to expansion I/O, making these controls capable of any size application. Native Ladder/IEC 61131-3. With the only 4.5” and 7" HMCs option for Class 1, Div 2, it's great for small spaces where there is no room for a PLC.
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Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
Connect the Hardware using a Protocol you Know
Maple Systems offers all the components you need to create your own unique level of supervisory data acquisition and control, from the simplest stand-alone machine to sophisticated multi-device networked production line(s), all the way to enterprise-level operations and IIoT functionalities leveraging cloud connectivity.
Log data from your devices to aid in reporting, to gain efficiencies, reduce downtime, and plan for routine maintenance. Add additional IIoT functionality like MQTT, OPC UA, Ignition, SQL database integration, and more. Our products can help you standardize communications between devices, gluing different systems together for one source to your SCADA. No need to redesign your entire application.
Keep the components that are already working for you, just add Maple Systems components to grow your abilities to supervise, control, and acquire data.
To learn more about how our products work together to create scalable SCADA solutions, visit our SCADA solutions page.
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