December 2010 Editor's Picks: Products from Fitzpatrick and Parsec Automation

The Fitzpatrick Company
Roller compactor provides efficiency and flexibility
The Fitzpatrick Company (Elmhurst, IL) designed its CCS 1025 Contained Chilsonator system to process various products efficiently. The system’s high-speed vertical precompression feed screw provides a uniform downward force on the product, thus helping to feed it to the nip region of the rolls. The vertical orientation and speed of the screw are intended to ensure that product is distributed across the face of the rolls evenly. The feed screw’s vertical orientation provides a path upward for air that is aspirated from the process, thus creating an efficient deaeration system.

The CCS 1025 system is designed to positively seal the product inside the process areas. Operators can disassemble the device easily for cleaning and reconfiguration. The system includes a wash-in-place to simplify cleaning. The CCS 1025 machine’s roll and size-reduction housing are designed as an integrated unit to minimize headroom requirements. Users can install the device in wall or as a free-standing unit.

Parsec Automation
Operations-management platform is designed for quick deployment
The LITETrak system is a version of Parsec Automation’s (Brea, CA) TrakSYS operations-management platform designed for rapid deployment without programming. The software can track production lines within an operations environment. The system contains the most commonly used features and functions of TrakSYS and is preconfigured with templates and dashboards.

The LITETrak system allows users to define attributes for each product, define production schedules, analyze asset and product performance, and track opportunities for improvement. The software’s web-based interface displays business-intelligence reports and key-performance-indicator dashboards, thus eliminating the need for a client-side software installation. The LITETrak software allows operators to contextualize automatically captured data, thus enabling root-cause analysis. Users also can trigger production stoppages manually.

The LITETrak software can scale up to a complete manufacturing execution system that interfaces with various enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The software provides ERP systems with real-time manufacturing information.