First Prize
Food Processing
UNILEVER INDIA EXPORTS LIMITED
PUNE TEA EXPORTS
Pune (Maharashtra)
Unit Profile
Unilever India Exports Ltd. Pune Tea Exports is located in Maharashtra at about
15 Kms from Pune Railway Station (20 kms. from Pune Airport). It is a 100%
Export Oriented Unit (EOU) and a strategic Global Double Chamber Tea Bag Sourcing
unit for Unilever. The factory produces premium quality blended tea bags. Tea
product produced is exported to Australia, USA, Japan, Israel, and Thailand. The
main brands are Lipton Yellow Label, Brooke Bond, Lipton Brisk, Rickshaw etc.
Unit manage its Supply Chain including sourcing of Packaging material and Raw
material from various countries of globe and again re-exporting the Finished good
to around 16 customer countries like Unilever Australia, UBFNA, Japan and other
South East Asia
Process / Equipment Details: Process starts with the blending of tea and stored
for the tea bag production. The packaging process is completely automated –
starting from carton forming, filling, coding and wrapping till packing; carton blanks
are formed into cartons in Carton erector machines and transferred to the
Constanta machines by upstream conveyors. Constanta machine produces the
tea bags and are automatically stacked in the carton packaging format at the
machine itself & the out-put from these machines are grouped & delivered SKUWise in 7 end of lines through the downstream conveyors, the entire operation is
performed with the below mentioned set of machineries and equipment automation
of the plant in by support of other ancillary link conveyors, batching systems &
interlocks with high quality monitoring and rejection systems.
173
Energy Conservation
Company Vision “Unilever Sustainability Living Plan” is to reduce the Carbon Foot
Print by Half and sustain it while it grow and double its business – In line with this
prime agenda & guidelines company march towards and achieved 3.03Lac unit
savings and in terms of monetarily cumulating to 20.2Lac savings.
Results:
Continuous improvements is been put over a period of time and continuously
raising company bars and delivered seamlessly and achieved dramatic results
year on year.
Last year(2014) plant total energy consumption is 1528625 Units as compared
against 2013 1836716 Units resulting in savings of 308091 units
Below graphs explicit the continuous reduction / saving over a period.
174
Table 1 - Energy in kWhr.
(All graphs - Calculation for monitoring and reporting – based upon the periods April to
March)
Energy Conservation
The below note describes plant major executions this year:
(A) Pneumatic High Pressure and Low Pressure Line Optimisation:
(i)
(ii)
Modifying the pneumatic air distribution for High / Low pressure air line.
Eliminating air consumption for the vacuum generator in Carton Erector
machine and constant tea bag machine (55 Machines) during intermittent
idle condition.
Key Highlights/actions:
(a) Compressor constitutes about 25% of the total plant’s power
(b) Air Audit conducted identified high air pressure & high cfm consumption
machines
(c) Re-layout of pneumatic system executed
(d) 6 bar for Carton Erector m/cs, Mohrbach mc & CLD sealing mc & 4 bar for
other equipments in shop floor
(e) Similarly unit have stopped the air consumption to the the vacuum generators
- while the machine is in OFF condition
Challenges and how overcome:
-
-
Huge cost to about Rs.20L for air audit and major modification with change
in layout of pneumatic headers and lines as suggested by external agencies
as per preliminary discussions.
Internal Air Audit done and identified the least cost option with an innovative
solution using the existing layout without any capital expenditure.
Redesigned and executed the pneumatic line layout as per the low & high
pressure requirement equipments in-house at low cost expenditure.
175
-
-
As per the OEM design anticipated Huge risk of high carton wastage post the
modification in carton erector machine for eliminating air consumption for
the vacuum generator during intermittent idle condition
Thoroughly brain-stormed with the team and implemented an out-of-box
thought by providing the modification along with a time delay so that the
carton erector will auto start with a time delay – which helps to firmly hold
the carton in the vacuum cups before the machine starts – resulting in Zero
carton wastage & huge energy saving.
176
(B) Replacement of Low efficient Compressors with High efficient
Compressor with VFD:
(a) The packaging process is completely automated –This process is takes place
with 125 primary equipment major of it are as follows Carton Erector –
7nos, Conveying Equipments – 9 lines, Constanta tea bag packing machines
– 53nos, Lid closure – 7nos, Inner and Outer coding – 19nos, Online weighers
– 9nos, Over-wrappers – 9nos and Case sealers – 1no, these all machines
are housed in unit Shop Floor other than the Over-wrappers and CaseSealer. All these machines are electro-mechanical-pneumatic machines which
require compressed air at 6 Kg for automation and machine operation. The
requirement of compressed air in shop floor is approximately 300 CFM at 6
kg/cm2 pressure – consumption varies according to the plan, loading of
machines etc., which is being provided by 04 Atlas Copco compressors, with
capacity of 100 CFM each and loosing energy to an extent of 30KW load.
(b) As the compressor is 14 years old the efficiencies have dropped significantly,
it is been also experienced the quality of compressed air (impurities like
moisture and oil content in excess) has also deteriorated and is affecting all
unit automation and machine equipments resulting with un-predicted
downtimes - as this is the common utility source this affects the entire plant
on productivity and increased maintenance cost.
(c) Unit did a technical feasibility study of all the compressors in the market and
chose the best suited design with all the latest monitoring and on-line Mail /
sms alerting systems.
Company follow TPM’s – 7 step Early Equipment Management process for all
the new installation, hence before purchase it understand about the equipment
and procure the best suited – It do a comparison analysis of all the
compressors in the market and choose the best suited considering all the
parameters including the Safety requirement.
(B) Energy Saving - other projects:
No. Project
Title
Detail of the project
1
Solar
Water
Heater
Hygiene station and canteen dishwashing
requires hot water which was earlier with
geysers, changed to Solar water heaters
with auto mixing thermostat for set temperature water
2
Constanta
Tea Bag
Machine –
air cut off
For 42 Machines there is an attachment known as
auto-filler where the cartons are automatically fed
parallel the tea bags produced from machine comes
in collated form into this auto filler machine – this
machine facilitates the process of fill inside carton by
a vacuum generator – the pneumatic air consumption
is approx. 2CFM per machine, while machine idle
time this vacuum generator keeps on in working
condition and looses air which is not required hence –
Benefits / Pictures
177
company technicians came out with a kaizen &
provided the solenoid valve for cutting-off the air while
mc in idle condition – necessary PLC programming
changed in al 42 machines
3
Energy
a.)
b.)
c.)
d.)
e.)
f.)
g.)
Fixed motion sensors at 3 Change rooms, rest
room and in toilet.
Tube light switch controls de-grouped In
Executives cabin & Godowns for optimising the
usage where-ever required.
End of Line coding conveyors were running
continuously while in idle condition hence
interlocked with a sensor – which is when the
CLD is coming at the entrance of conveyor the
coding conveyor starts and the CLD moves on
the conveyor to get coded.
Fixing of cost-effective CFL lamps in place of
high wattage lights / tube lights - Street lights,
gate lights, parking area, toilet area.
As a second phase IE3 motor provided for the
balance equipments – AHU of blower& blending
dust collector
Idle running of Conveyors has been provided
with individual control switches for eliminating
idle run.
Conventional air conditioners replaced with high
efficient Inverter type air conditioner in Server
room.
Energy and Environment Policy
178