Mencom helps improve safety at dairy company

El Poma, a Colombian dairy company founded in 1953, saw the need to improve electrical safety at the factory. Specifically, they wanted solutions to provide employees with a safer working environment and better protect electrical equipment at the production site while reducing the risk of downtime.

There were challenges to address. First, the most critical components in their equipment – the milk steriliser, the enzyme dosing system, and powdered milk packaging machines were unfortunately all built with different installations and wiring by different manufacturers. Second, they also operate independently in three different low-quality electrical cabinets. While the machines can be operated safely by employees without an electrical license, these complex connections from different applications should be streamlined.

El Poma’s partner for this project was CGS Optimize, a Mencom distributor in Colombia, who suggested building one high-quality electrical cabinet to operate all machines in, instead of the three current cabinets. The key components of this cabinet, which were integrated to achieve the goal, were Mencom’s Low-profile Panel Interface Connectors and USB Port Adapters.

The Mencom Panel Interface connectors and USB Port adapters allowed the PLC to operate without having to open the cabinet. This setup protects the operators and secures the connection. As a result, the solutions performed by CGS Optimize could significantly reduce the risks of electrical accidents and help save PLC programming time. All these solutions were achieved without interfering with the factory production and El Pomar could successfully centralise the equipment operation into the one cabinet for the first time, standardizing all programming and operating routines.