The J.R. Simplot Company, one of the oldest agribusinesses in the US, operates a high-quality fertilizer plant in Helm, California. Built in the 1950s, and operated by J.R. Simplot company since the 1990s, Enterprise Automation first began servicing the facility as controls integrator in 2006 and has been involved in numerous control system retrofit and expansion projects on site.
Every year, like many industrial faculties, J.R. Simplot’s Helm plant undergoes a routine and scheduled turnaround event during which the entire process is taken offline for routine maintenance and renewal. As part of the process, EA has engineers on site to perform a “deep cleaning” and inspection of the SCADA and controls system. The inspection includes everything from examining physical IO and refreshing PLC panels to reviewing SCADA and PLC error logs and updating firmware.
EA has been J.R. Simplot Helm’s sole-sourced systems integrator for over 7 years, and the team proactively maintains hardware components and spares. Part of the maintenance process also involves interviewing staff for information about how the controls system is performing as opposed to waiting for a call when something has gone wrong, and the need is urgent.
EA maintains 5 IOC (input/output cabinets) that contain roughly 750 IO. Additionally, the facility’s redundant Citect SCADA servers and Wonderware Historian are kept up to date with the latest product release and firmware.
