Can Motors & Drives Offer a Strategic Edge?
With motors and drives found around almost every corner of any manufacturing plant, food & beverage processing companies continue to look for ways to pull value from these components without sacrificing efficiency, reliability or safety. And as stakeholders, executives and customers demand even more improvement, plant engineers and operators have had to look at the finest of details to make incremental advances.
As a result, processors look at motors and drives much more strategically than they have in decades past — an approach that can produce some fine results for any facility. Processors seek ways to reduce maintenance, improve reliability and enhance sanitation throughout their operations, says Alexander Kanaris, president of Van der Graaf (VDG).
“Electric motors and gear reducers are critical components of conveyor systems, and the failure of the conveyor drive can shut down an entire production line, resulting in costly downtime,” he explains.
Processors, in some ways, have heightened expectations when it comes to these components as well, looking for longer lifespans with a reduced load on the maintenance teams — no matter where the motors and drives are operating in a facility.
“In a food plant, there is a wide variety of things happening in various areas of the plant, and each one requires a different motor and drive requirement,” says Stefanie Casimir, global product marketing manager for ABB's NEMA division. She emphasizes that selecting the right motor for the right application is half the battle.
“You don't want to be throwing these motors away every month, you want them to last longer,” she says. “But you also don't want to put a very food-safe motor on a conveyor that hardly gets washed down. That's overkill.”
Selecting for safety
Across the food production supply chain, various processes have wildly different needs for the motors and drives that put the product in motion. Some areas are focused on efficiency, others on longevity, and still other zones have strict food safety requirements. On the plant floor, sanitary design has been critical for all equipment, but also when it comes to innovation in the motors and drives space.
“Traditional external conveyor drives contain gaps and crevices where bacteria and food residue can accumulate, making them difficult to clean,” Kanaris says. “On conveyors using modular belts, food byproducts can also collect between the drive sprockets, creating additional hygiene concerns.”
In response to these demands, VDG developed its Drum Motor, which balances reliability and longevity with innovative sanitary design: All components are enclosed within the drum, meaning processors have no external drive components to maintain or clean.
Casimir adds that proper education and follow-through on placement of components sets the right foundation for success on the food safety front.
“Simply understanding the environment in which your motor will be placed really drives the requirements you need to specify to your motor manufacturer,” she says. “For example, you can't have a painted motor placed over conveyors carrying food, because some day the paint on that motor might chip off, and you don’t want that in your product stream.”
Third-party organizations like NSF can help with this challenge, whether the surfaces involved qualify as Food Zones, Splash Zones or Non-Food Zones, for instance. With that properly identified, Casimir says, “it’s simply being smart about what type of motors belong in certain locations.”
Seeking sustainability
Over the years, food & beverage processors also have ramped up efforts to reduce their energy consumption at their facilities and lower their carbon footprint wherever possible.
That includes a wide variety of initiatives, but many companies have turned to the drive systems in their facilities to fine-tune these efforts. Advancement also has come along with regard to the controls of the motors and drives, explains Kanaris.
“As automation and advanced processing technologies continue to evolve, motors and drives are increasingly being controlled by variable frequency drives (VFDs), enabling more precise and efficient conveyor operation,” Kanaris explains. “Rather than receiving a fixed-frequency power supply, these motors operate on varying frequencies generated by the VFD, allowing operators to adjust conveyor speeds to match changing production requirements.”
Beyond their own ability to reduce energy consumption, motors and drives can impact the sustainability bottom line of a plant in a few bigger-picture ways, Casimir adds.
“When it comes to sustainability, it's not just about the application longevity or the motor life,” she explains. “It's also how sustainable your supply chain is, what replenishment looks like and where the motors and drives are shipped from — many of them come from overseas, and that’s really important to the sustainability portion.”
In addition, with the move to more automated systems and predictive maintenance models, processors can better plan for downtime instead of having it hijack the production lines unexpectedly.
“It's not just about having the most efficient motor and a drive to control that motor when it's needed, but it’s also about the condition monitoring: understanding when your motor is about to fail and doing proactive maintenance on the motor or drive,” she explains.
Kanaris says the next frontier in drive technology will see processors achieve even higher sanitation, energy efficiency, reliability and sustainability standards, improving on the demands for minimal maintenance, reduced downtime and frequent, harsh washdown environments that also reduce water consumption.
“Drive technologies that eliminate external components, simplify cleaning and maximize energy efficiency will continue to play an increasingly important role as food processing facilities strive to improve reliability, productivity, food safety and overall equipment effectiveness,” he says.
About the Author
Andy Hanacek
Senior Editor
Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.