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Going digital helps enable PMO compliance in pasteurization

Clayton Wilson

Clayton Wilson is product manager at Yokogawa, a leading provider of industrial automation and test and measurement solutions with U.S. headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a guest columnist for this week’s issue of Cheese Market News®.

I spoke with Ryon Shaw, project engineer at the Michigan Milk Producers Association (MMPA), to get his perspective on the current state of digital recording in the dairy industry and his thoughts on the challenges facing facilities today.

Q: What are the challenges you experience in your role?
A: As long as cows produce, milk must continuously flow in dairy facilities. Processes such as pasteurization must continue uninterrupted to prevent waste and, of course, the related expenses. To prove that processes have been performed safely, recording of measurement data also must be continuous. We at MMPA, a multisite, farmer-owned cooperative, have found an accurate and efficient way to maintain an uninterrupted recording and prove we meet regulations.

The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) is a set of standards and requirements that regulate aspects of dairy plants producing Grade “A” products. It’s the dairy bible that we dairy producers, manufacturers and balancing plants must follow to verify food safety.

Inspectors want to know that we have maintained the proper process variables for pasteurization, for example, mandatory temperatures, flow rates and flow diversion status. Inspections go more smoothly with a lot less stress when dairy organizations have the technology to record the data correctly.

Q: What’s really needed from technology?
A: In the dairy industry, we do our best with available technology, but we all know that paper and pen recorders have been cumbersome. And I’m willing to bet that each of you reading this article has stories about batches that had to be scrapped because their safety couldn’t be proven after a recording pen ran dry or milk spilled on the paper record.

This is what we’re living each day. These are the issues we are confronted with.

At MMPA, our method of recording data has been, of course, to use a paper-format data recorder. The moderately thick pen can’t indicate more resolution than a tenth of a degree. Although this level of precision has been accepted for a long time, we have wanted to record the higher precision as measured by our instrumentation. With this information, we could make improvements to our processes and better understand deviations.

Our relationships with the inspectors have been good, and they recognize we are looking for better ways to document the safety of our pasteurization process. In the past, they have requested temperature precision to the hundredth of a degree and faster review of the data. As previously mentioned, the trend line on a piece of chart paper cannot document temperature values to a tenth of a degree. There’s always quite a bit of interpolation that comes into play when trying to define a digital value on chart paper that offers grid lines only every two degrees Fahrenheit. We knew that our quality control department would appreciate the tenth of a degree (or better) values on the paperless readings.

We also recognized that our processes could be improved by a more user-friendly analysis method.

Searching through paper records to understand the data has always been difficult and potentially could have generated errors. And each of us in dairy facilities have had to dig through paper batch records to answer inspectors’ questions about a specific batch number.

Q: Why integrate digital recording to meet the PMO?
A: Although we liked the idea of moving toward paperless recorders, we were hesitant to adopt it. The universally accepted M-b number has not been available for a digital recorder until very recently. To move toward our paperless goal, however, we worked with our instrumentation and solution provider. After decades of experience and co-innovations with Yokogawa, we added their SMARTDAC+ GX digital recorder in parallel with our paper recorder.

A demo for the skeptical inspectors showed them where the recorders would be installed in the application and showed them that the digital recorder had special firmware that meets the PMO specification. Specifically: the recorder can be put into a Regulatory Lockdown Mode where users are locked out of certain capabilities until the inspector releases the lock. Security settings allow users to see the recorder parameters, but they cannot perform the restricted actions that are prohibited by the PMO.

During COVID, our parallel tests continued, but progress in removing the paper recorder slowed. We maintained the paper chart as the master and used the digital as a backup. Results of the side-by-side comparison of our current paper chart with a digital recorder showed more accurate digital data with no wasted paper or ink, and no ruined records through water or fire.

Q: Why are continuous recording and tailoring reports important in dairy facilities?
A: The recorders enable inspectors and our team to use the touch screen to view the configuration file and prove how the input was configured for the recording session. The configuration parameters of the recorder are always saved as an integral part of the data file. The encrypted data file contains the instrument name, serial number, configuration with detailed input types and scaling for each channel as well as time-stamped trend/digital values as a historical record.

We can show inspectors a real-time web page with graphics launched on a browser. During inspections, we do not need to go out to the floor; we can sit in a remote office and see recorder data — trends, values, logs and more. In fact, we have a recorder showing real-time graphics on a remote monitor in the control room. The operators in the control room can view the conditions on the plant floor in real-time.

The recorder is just another node on the network, and all its data can be used in digitally created reports and analyses. Recently, our team called up data for a process area and viewed the temperature for three months starting on a given day. During the recording sessions, notes and ideas were written on the touch screen so the quality department could view them and determine if improvements could be made to the process. All notes and annotations are saved as part of the secure encrypted data file.

Plainly, the digital recorder helps enable PMO compliance in the pasteurization processes. But the digital recorder strengthens many other areas in our organization — anywhere we need to log process flow, temperature, valve status and more.

As we perform clean-in-place (CIP) applications, we can use the digital recorders to record the important parameters that show the vessels and pipes have been properly cleaned — recording flow rate and chemical concentration. In fact, the recorder itself is wash-down ready as it carries a NEMA 4- IP65 rating.

Q: What are your future plans for the technology?
A: Our plan is to go completely digital in time. In fact, the silo temperature recording is currently paperless. For now, we are still operating the pasteurization process with both paper and digital recorders in parallel. You might ask what we will do after we have final approval to use the digital recorders? My answer: Rip out the paper recorders and have a party.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.

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