Schneider Electric, the leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, has successfully implemented its Aavin Dairy project with technology that can further boost its performance in the Indian dairy industry. Aavin Dairy, a Tamil Nadu Co-operative Milk Producers’ Federation Limited (TCMPF Ltd), is a co-operative institution functioning in a three-tier system. The objective of the federation is to promote the economic development of the farming community by procurement of milk from villages, processing of milk and manufacturing of milk products. Aavin recently implemented a smart manufacturing unit through Schneider Electric’s IoT enabled architecture- EcoStruxure for Food and Beverage. The dairy industry is on a high growth path with a 15 per cent compounded annual growth (CAGR) expected over 2016-2020 and is set to outperform global production according to a report by Edelweiss.

 

India is expected to surpass EU to emerge as the largest dairy producer by 2020. Acknowledging the growth of the dairy sector in the country, the government of India has implemented the Central Scheme National Dairy Plan - Phase 1 during 2012-17 to improve productivity of dairy cooperatives through several input activities. Investments by private players in the domestic dairy sector is also expected to further augment milk productivity. Hence, automation and technology adoption is going to be a critical piece in this upsurge.

 

Keeping in line with this agenda, Aavin Dairy has recently deployed Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for food and beverage to improve productivity levels of its manufacturing unit. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Hybrid DCS powered by apps, analytics, services, edge control and connected products has totally integrated and automated the plant for better operational and production efficiency. It is a scalable and flexible system architecture for future capacity expansion, while ensuring object based programming for standardisation using liquid food libraries, easy maintenance and operation. 

 

Speaking on the benefits of technology deployment, Dr S Selvaraj, General Manager CDCMPU Ltd (Aavin), said, “We wanted to improve on the accuracy in milk processing and uniformity in end product quality and our plant’s operational efficiency, flexibility and scalability. EcoStruxure Hybrid DCS helped us strengthen all this while improving our operational efficiency by 50 per cent since all the data is monitored and visualised and turned into actionable insights. This has improved asset management and energy efficiency, further increasing processing capacity from 2 LLPD to 3 LLPD scalable to 5 LLPD.”

 

The dairy industry is facing a series of challenges including limited monitoring affecting operational efficiency, lack of visibility on energy consumption and scalability. Digital transformation with corresponding change in the business model provides new revenue and value-producing opportunities. In order to improve efficiencies and to ensure optimisation of production that can be safely processed, stored and delivered, the F&B supply chains need to be realigned and digitised.