/ T. Marzetti Company /

As the producer of hundreds of delicious dressings and sauces for its own brands and many well-known national restaurant chains, T. Marzetti Company knows keeping up with demand is critical. To address increasing customer volume, the company is continuously evaluating its production needs. 

As a result, for nearly two decades, our parent company Gray has been a trusted partner by T. Marzetti's side, delivering facilities and systems that keep operations running strong. In 2005, Gray built T. Marzetti’s original dressing and sauce production facility in Horse Cave, KY, followed by a bakery for subsidiary Sister Schubert’s, and then worked on a cold storage expansion in 2011. 

Most recently, T. Marzetti contracted Gray, who enlisted the services of the process, packaging, automation and control experts at Gray AES, to manage a turnkey expansion of the original facility built in 2005 to keep up with demand. The goal of this expansion was to double production capabilities by adding six new kitchens, five packaging lines, and all the additional equipment, such as tanks and CIP systems, needed to support this increased production. 

Key Services Delivered: 

• Design and procurement of dozens of tanks for raw material storage, mixing, buffering, and holding
• Selection of and sizing of pumps, valves, instruments, and transmitters to reduce spare parts inventory while updating technology
• Design, fabricate, and install all aspects of the control systems for multiple new kitchens 
• Design two packaging lines capable of the following:
  • Receiving empty plastic bottles in totes
  • Filling bottles with sauce products
  • Capping bottles
  • Induction sealing
  • Labeling
  • Shrink sleeving
  • Case packing
  • Palletizing and stretch wrapping pallets for shipment

• Deliver OT networking services to connect all systems to the manufacturing network
• Execute factory acceptance tests
• Manage installation, start-up, and commissioning of all packaging lines to seamlessly connect all the new and existing equipment and integrate new processes with existing processes
  

Embracing the Unknowns

In our world, the recipe for success often begins with asking the right questions. That's why we make it a point to approach each project with a fresh perspective, leaving no room for old-school assumptions. During our initial consultation, we discovered some challenges around documentation, the flow of materials throughout the facility, and resources. To resolve these challenges, we quickly got to work meeting with a variety of stakeholders throughout the plant including operations, the reliability team, maintenance, control engineering, and management. As we continued to craft the requirements for the new system, we refined this group into a core team of decision makers and project reviewers. 

Once we had a firm grasp of the new system's requirements, our mission was clear – double production by creating a highly flexible turnkey solution, from receiving raw materials to palletizing finished products.

Designing and Deploying a True End-to-End Process Solution 

When you are making the secret sauce for well-known restaurants and brands, you can’t afford to pause production because you run out of a key ingredient. To mitigate potential supply chain hiccups, we started our work at the beginning of their production process by designing, engineering, and procuring all the necessary equipment to double processing storage capabilities.

At the same time all this work was happening, our automation and controls experts were busy configuring the control systems for the new kitchens. This included designing, fabricating, and installing local HMIs and remote I/O control panels, motor control centers (MCCs), variable-frequency drives (VFDs), and instrumentation. This translated to building ~30 separate panels and a redundant ControlLogix controller pair, using Inductive Automation’s Ignition software for the HMIs, and incorporating more than 1,000 I/O points.

Additional services we provided included the following:

• Develop a process for segregating cleaning paths and adding one new CIP and two new clean-out-of-place (COP) systems to allow for simultaneous cleaning on multiple lines
• Design two new packaging lines
• Connect existing and new sides of the plant by embracing the customer’s design process of flow panels
• Map out intricate pathways to ensure simplicity for the operations team

Bringing it All Together 

Since we are truly a one-stop-shop for turnkey projects, we also provided a variety of additional services for T. Marzetti including:

• ‍OT networking There were 230 Ethernet devices that needed to talk to our PLC alone. We specified two IDF cabinets to connect all our new systems to the manufacturing network.

• Start-Up and Commissioning Support Our team, which included highly skilled packaging, processing, automation, and OEM field service engineers, helped seamlessly connect all the new and existing equipment and integrate new processes with existing processes. 

Downtime Minimized, Excellence Maximized

Partnering with Gray AES to develop a turnkey solution was like securing a safety net for every phase of T. Marzetti’s journey. Our team of engineers were well prepared to skillfully design, develop, procure, and seamlessly integrate control systems that not only fulfilled their present requirements but were also scalable for future needs.

Learn more about this project on Gray.com