Increasing Productivity of Palletizing System by PLC Modification

The cement industry is one of the most important industries and higher consumption of thermal and electrical energy.Fushe-Kruja Cement Factory in Albania has an annual capacity of 1.3million tons of cement and meet globalstandards for environmental protection. Achieving high process energy efficiency and ensuring high product qualityare the main duties of the cost-effective cement production in Fushe Kruja factory. Recently, as the cement demandrose, the factory has encountered with long-waiting lines at the loading facilities. The plant loading facilities arecapable to serve pallet loading, bulk loading, and floor loading trucks. The paper is focused on pallet loading facility,as it is the easiest one to be modified. Thus, the goal is to redesign the loading facility and change the process so thatoverall waiting time in system is reduced. It will be shown that by modification of PLC programming of palletizingsystem can be increased the production capacity, using line automation flexibility without sacrificing quality, reducedthe energy consumption and other costs and simplified the complexity of actual palletizing system. SIMATICManager Step 7 software is used for modification of PLC programing and PRO Tool software to program theSIEMENS control panels. Two main factors are taking in consideration during the study: 1) time of productionprocess, which is converted in palletizing system efficiency, and 2) cost of production. Proposed PLC programmingmodification will ensure maximum robustness and maximum operational reliability combined with excellentpalletizing quality. This will benefit the company in increasing two times its palletizing system capacity, increasingresource utilization in distribution facility, reducing production costs and gaining customers’ satisfaction.