Ignition Meets FSMA Requirements for Better Food Safety

SmartWash Solutions is based in Salinas, California, near Silicon Valley and the California Central Valley — one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. It’s the perfect location for a food-safety technology company. SmartWash cares a great deal about food safety. That’s why it’s enabling data collection and analysis for its customers, and also helping those customers meet requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) created FSMA to strengthen prevention of foodborne illness.
 
“FSMA is very important for our customers right now,” said Chris McGinnis, director of operations and engineering at SmartWash Solutions. “We’re thinking about food safety all the time.” SmartWash created Process ProData Live (PPDL), to collect and deliver real-time data. It allows operators, managers, and executives to see information on food safety, plant efficiency, and productivity from any location with internet access. It also shows trends and analytics, generates reports, and helps customers stay FSMA-compliant.
 
PPDL was built on Ignition by Inductive Automation®. Ignition is an industrial application platform with tools for building solutions in human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
 
Ignition’s unlimited licensing — no extra costs for new projects, sites, users, tags, etc. — was a key factor in the success of this project. “With any other solution, the costs would have been prohibitive,” said McGinnis. “This is the only way we could have accomplished what we have. The project itself has quadrupled in size, and the number of customers has tripled.”
 
SmartWash provides PPDL to 40 customers in eight countries — and predicts those numbers will continue to rise. A major draw for customers is SmartWash’s ability to see the same data they are seeing, enabling SmartWash to help troubleshoot issues remotely.

Integrator Sets It Up

SmartWash was assisted in the creation of PPDL by Able-Baker Automation, a system integration firm based in Northern California. “I certainly had my choice of platforms for this project,” said Bob Hastie, senior controls engineer with Able-Baker. “But Ignition really appealed to me because it’s database-centric, and it really allows me to deploy new sites quickly. And that’s without a lot of programming.”
 
Hastie set SmartWash up to do a lot on its own in Ignition. “We let technicians basically push a button and deploy a new site within 20 minutes,” said Hastie. “And then we make sure every site is configured exactly the same. It makes maintenance a lot easier.”
 
The software’s low cost is coupled with diverse capabilities. “There are multiple facets to this,” said Hastie. “You have reporting, trending, and all the things you’d normally find in a SCADA system. It really gives SmartWash and its customers the data they need to make good decisions.”

Large Customer, Big Benefits

Taylor Farms is SmartWash’s largest customer. It’s also the largest producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States, and has locations in several countries. Taylor Farms uses PPDL to manage the chemistry in its wash-water systems.
 
“Before PPDL, people in the industry were using manual operations or other systems that just weren’t adequate,” said Kari Valdes, director of food safety and quality at Taylor Farms. “They would fall out of calibration, the information would not be accurate, and it wouldn’t be trend-able and available at the click of a button. That made it hard to look at the data and trends that really help us determine if our systems are in control.”
 
With PPDL, it’s a different story. “Our screens and dashboards show us if we’re in control or out of control, and the system can shut the machinery down prior to any issues,” said Valdes. “And it really helps us understand our machinery and know if everything’s running smoothly.”
 
Historical data is also valuable for Taylor Farms. “PPDL grabs real-time data and stores it for as long as we need it,” said Valdes. “That means in the event of a traceback, audit, or just an investigation, we’re able to go back within minutes and capture that data; we can see exactly what was going on when that bag of salad was made.”
 

Variety of Users

SmartWash serves a variety of customers, both large and small. “Each customer is unique in terms of operations and needs, and what they require from the software,” said Angela Nunez, vice president of technical services at SmartWash. “But they all have one thing in common: They want to have the best safety programs out there.”
 
Nunez talks to customers daily, hearing ideas, troubleshooting with them, and working with them toward better safety and efficiency. She describes it as a partnership that’s fostered by PPDL, which lets everyone look at the same data.
 
“We’re working on several new projects, and some of those are very innovative,” said Nunez. “Ignition is one of the ways we push forward in innovation in terms of food safety. It’s incredible what you can do with it. It’s all up to your imagination.”
 
Hastie of Able-Baker said this project contains many examples of Ignition’s flexibility. “I can make Ignition custom to whatever I want to do, more so than other systems out there,” he said. “I see it as a very flexible platform I can build on.”

Transcript:

00:07
Christopher McGinnis: I'm Christopher McGinnis, the Director of Operations and Engineering at SmartWash Solutions. SmartWash Solutions is a food safety technology company focused on produce washing and keeping product safe for the consumer. SmartWash Solutions chose the Ignition platform for our Process ProData Live data system. Process ProData Live allows our customers to see what's happening on the plant floor with their wash lines, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn't matter if they're in an office, on the plant floor, on a beach. If they have a laptop connected to the internet, they can see exactly what's happening at any of their facilities.

00:47
Kari Valdes: I'm Kari Valdes, Director of Food Safety and Quality for Taylor Farms. Taylor Farms is the largest producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States. We utilize Process ProData Live to manage the chemistry in our wash water systems. This means that all of the fresh-cut produce that we have running through our manufacturing facilities is 100% free of cross-contamination of any bacteria.

01:14 
Christopher McGinnis: The Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA, is extremely important right now for all of our customers. It's new regulations that they have to meet. With the flexibility of Ignition, we've been able to, almost on the fly, build in new needed information services through a PPDL so that our customers can ensure they are meeting the requirements.

01:37
Kari Valdes: Our screen and dashboards are able to show us, in an instant, if we are in control or out of control, and it can shut the machinery down prior to having any concerns or issues.

01:50 
Angela Nunez: I am Angela Nunez. I am the VP of Technical Services at SmartWash Solutions. Right now, we're servicing around 40 customers and we're growing. The customers are quite surprised when they see our system in operation compared to what they had in the past. Not only are they happy, but the people on the processing floor are more than happy, to be honest.

02:22
Christopher McGinnis: SmartWash is also able to see our customers’ data for troubleshooting purposes. We can help the plant fix a problem remotely without having to step foot on the plant floor.

02:33
Kari Valdes: With Taylor Farms being so large in multiple states and multiple countries, it's very important for quick and easy access to help. Our team at SmartWash is able to remotely dial in and fix any issues or concerns that we have really quickly.

02:52 
Bob Hastie: I'm Bob Hastie. I'm a Senior Controls Engineer with Able-Baker Automation. We are a systems integrator based in Northern California. This particular project was a SCADA system that we developed for SmartWash Solutions. So we chose Ignition for the platform for several different reasons, chief among them was probably cost. I chose to implement the hub and spoke architecture. We have one visualization server sitting in our data center, which has all the reporting and all of that in it. To do that with other SCADA products, the licensing would have just probably been cost-prohibitive to be able to do that.

03:36
Christopher McGinnis: Ignition, with its unlimited licenses, just allowed us to do things other solutions didn't.

03:41
Bob Hastie: Ignition really appealed to me for rapid deployment, database-centric, everything that allows me, again, to deploy new sites quickly.

03:56 
Christopher McGinnis: The Ignition platform is great for development.

04:00
Bob Hastie: If there's not something that I need inherently built into Ignition, I can make it do what I want. I can build on to it.

04:07 
Angela Nunez: Ignition does enable this partnership because it is the platform where we all communicate in. We're all looking at the same data, and it allows us to have a common point to communicate what is actually happening on the floor and what we want to see in the future.