High Speed Beverage Ingredient Dosing

Challenge:

 

A beverage producer came to InLine needing high-speed liquid ingredient dosing with precise accuracy and reliability to improve their bottling process.

 

Action:

 

InLine executed a step-by-step action plan to achieve the goal. First, the company evaluated risk—high speeds, verification of dose, required unlimited flexibility, variable viscosities, sanitary CIP requirement. The team then generated solutions—intermittent motion, walking beam, ballistic targeting, timed valve, physical pumps, etc.

 

To eliminate risk, InLine investigated pharma, chem E, medical, and other industries. InLine reviewed (3) Proofs of Principles to eliminate the two most prominent alternatives. The third PoP became the preferred focus, at which point the team progressed through successful accuracy and reliability testing. InLine then developed a specification, building and testing a first commercial unit and writing operating guidelines and standard operating procedures. A complete set of fabrication drawings were then generated for mass production.

 

Vendor sourcing services for the customer helped to source a fabricator with capabilities and support staff. InLine used the first commercial unit to train and test vendor support staff, then trained a second isolated builder to assemble and test critical intellectual property parts, insulating them from the primary builder.

 

InLine then created an implementation plan and activated the first system in a production environment, followed by the development of an installation and start-up process that demonstrated the effectiveness to management. InLine documented installation techniques and settings. Once the team achieved acceptable results detailed in the Scope of Work and Charter, InLine assisted the customer with a scale-up to full production.