Production Planning and Control of a Master Churn Mixer for the Manufacture of Margarine using Fuzzy Logic at an Oil Company in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Process and chemical companies have to continually monitor and control their mixing equipment to ensure that production matches requirements and meets recommended standards especially in food processing. The oil company in this research faced challenges in meeting required specifications in some of their batches, prompting the need to look at more efficient ways to control and monitor the master churn mixer. This paper looks at how intelligent fuzzy logic was used to automate the production planning and control of the master churn mixer of the margarine plant. MATLAB 7.12 was used in developing the control algorithm that enabled all the inputs to be monitored closely before they entered the master churn, while maintaining vegetable oil at 80%, water at 20% and operating temperature at 38 o C. This was enabled by sensors and programmable logic controllers which monitored all parameters using fuzzy logic to produce margarine of acceptable quality and standards.