With chips and snacks, the Swiss family-owned company Zweifel Pomy-Chips AG achieved sales of around 278 million Swiss francs in 2021. A good 440 employees contribute to the success of the snack empire. They ensure the smooth production of around 50 different types of chips and snacks, together making up more than 9,000 tonnes per year. Zweifel also takes care of the engineering of its plants with capacities up to 3,000 kilos per hour.
Plant diagrams with just a few clicks
Using the ELCAD software, Switzerland's biggest producer of chips became an AUCOTEC customer back in the early 2000s. Marco Lo Giudice established the tool there as a young industrial electrician. Today, Zweifel develops its "raw" purchased sub-plants with AUCOTEC's cooperation platform Engineering Base (EB) – and with Lo Giudice as the project manager. "The decision to use EB was easy," he reports and explains: "A deep fryer, for example, is supplied with purely mechanical information in a list, on the basis of which we generate our TAGs (functional attributes) in EB. For components that are used again and again, we use function-oriented typicals, which are only possible thanks to EB's interdisciplinary principle." This is more than recommended, because the information of all disciplines involved is centrally located directly on the object. "Electrical diagrams are created with just a few clicks. Changes are also simplified enormously and made transparent for everyone in no time. If a function changes, all documents in which it appears immediately change," says Lo Giudice. Zweifel has been planning and maintaining its own plants for several years now. Thanks to EB, all the diagrams of a plant, from electrical engineering, R&Is to pneumatics, are now combined in one data model.
"Keeping processes under control"
After completion of the engineering, the digital plant twin in EB is available for both production and maintenance. The comprehensive diagrams facilitate the monitoring and maintenance of up to 100 motors, including valves and sensors, on each plant. The clear overview that EB provides is essential, because the snack producer has been growing steadily for years. "Today, instead of one shift per day, production takes place around the clock during peak phases," says the project manager. The motivation for comprehensive and reliable plant data is correspondingly high: "We want to keep the processes under control," he underlines. EB's central data storage and cross-discipline way of working now offer the snack giant maximum flexibility and synergies across the various disciplines. Above all, the complete documentation is always up to date," praises Marco Lo Giudice. "If you need synergies, you need EB," he concludes.
