"Matrikon has the most complete set of drivers in the world, has the most knowledgeable driver developers in the world, and has a sterling track record of customer satisfaction."
Dave Zimmer, Vice President of AspenTech
Stretch Island Fruit produces 100% fruit snacks. Due to the tremendous success they have experienced over the past decade, Stretch Island undertook a project to double the capacity of their Allyn, Washington plant. Heading up the project is Vice President of AspenTech, Dave Zimmer, who teamed up with MatrikonOPC to handle the connectivity requirements.
The scope of the project included facility expansion, integrating additional equipment, optimizing existing equipment and implementing Aspen Technology’s Aspen Manufacturing Suite and Aspen e-Supply Chain Suite software.
Small food manufacturing plants, such as Stretch Island Fruit, differ from large-scale chemical plants and refineries in that each unique piece of equipment has standalone controls and proprietary protocols. To avoid the time and expense of writing numerous proprietary drivers, Zimmer standardized on OPC technology. OPC enabled Zimmer to interface the many disparate systems and collect all of the data into AspenTech’s InfoPlus.21 centralized process information management application.
Matrikon’s OPC Genie was used as one of the primary OPC servers. MatrikonOPC Genie is a configurable OPC server used to interface with simple devices. It enabled Zimmer to connect dryers, wrappers, conveyors, and depositors to InfoPlus.21, whereas previously the equipment was only able to output data to a p