LMS line management system - almost instantaneous batch changes and enhanced capability

In terms of the quantity of milk processed - 2.2 billion litres of raw milk a year – and with 35 per cent share of Great Britain’s fresh milk market, Arla Foods UK, Leeds, is the UK’s largest supplier of fresh milk.
The greenfield dairy at Stourton was assigned to Krones as single-source vendor, thereby avoiding complicated interfaces. Arla ordered four lines from Krones, one for each of the one-pint (0.568 l), two-pint (1.136 l), four-pint (2.27 l) and six-pint (3.408 l) HDPE bottles.
The integrated LMS line management system permits almost instantaneous batch changes, enhances the lines’ capabilities and delivers full traceability of the products manufactured.
Arla Food produces three different types of milk: whole milk, semi-skimmed milk and skimmed milk. Each type of milk requires up to eight different labels for each different customer. With the three types of milk for eight different retailer labels and four bottle sizes, this makes up almost 100 different orders - day in, day out.
If Arla were to handle an order manually without the line management system, products would have to exit from a line completely before starting on the next order; this would result in approximately 15 minutes lost time between each order. The LMS line management system has enabled the lost time between two orders for the same type of milk to be cut to less than a minute.
The entire day’s orders are transferred from Arla’s SAP system every morning to the line management system; this provides for instantaneous batch changes. The line management system integrates the lines at Arla Foods directly into the planning function of the SAP system. The machine orders, together with the product recipes, are distributed to the individual machines, where they are displayed and processed. The completion of an order and actual quantity ultimately bottled is finally reported to the line management system and to SAP. This documents the bottling batches and makes it easy to track all production orders.