Hygiene sluices ensure clean production
Carsten Homuth often uses the expression “step by step”. As technical project manager, he has accompanied Mohn, based in Meinerzhagen, Germany, on its way to becoming one of the market leaders for hygiene sluices, washing systems, and stainless steel plant equipment for the food processing industry. On a step-by-step basis, he also refitted the product range to run on control systems with the LOGO! logic module. These two things go hand in hand with each other.
This is interesting for innovation driver Mohn, particularly with regard to the use of energy and resources: “We are the only company on the market that can do without detection sensors in optical form for shoe sole cleaning,” explains Homuth. With printed circuit boards controlling the process, the sensor only detects when someone enters the sluice. The brushes then run for a preset time interval, even if the employee steps out after only half the time has elapsed.
Innovation saves energy and resources
Cleaning cycles
HIGHLINE reacts immediately via LOGO! and stops motors and cleaning agent additions as soon as the employee leaves the lock. With 5,000 cleaning cycles per day, there is a great savings potential.
People per shift
Mohn offers HIGHLINE, its high-end hygiene sluice, for use in large-scale operations with 200 people per shift.
Sluices
Every year, Mohn sells about 120 to 150 of the hygiene sluices to customers around the world.
Making customer wishes come true
“In the past, we used printed circuit boards for the control system,” says Carsten Homuth. But they were rather temperamental. If a printed circuit board failed, faults in the operational process would follow. “In addition, every customer has their own requirements and wants to integrate the sluice into their plant differently.” That’s why Homuth started looking for a more durable and flexible solution, and found it with LOGO! 8. “With our HIGHLINE hygiene sluice, we are able to implement everything the customer wants.” And that can amount to quite a lot.
This also applies to the network interfaces of LOGO! 8. The customer can bring up consumption data or change settings from anywhere in the company via Industrial Ethernet. Mohn can even access the controller remotely and conduct remote maintenance. While the German company tended to supply small and medium-sized enterprises in the past, today Mohn hygiene sluices are delivered to the global players of the food industry. Remote maintenance is an important issue with these customers, along with worldwide availability of spare parts.
With LOGO! 8, you no longer have rigid specifications, but can create settings that are precise to the second, simply by using the display.Carsten Homuth, technical project manager at Mohn GmbH
