JHB Trip · Task Manager
Supreme Poultry · 3 August - extended through the weekend, ~17 August.
L1
RunningNew bellows fitted, roll shaft levelled. Software + telemetry still to come.
L2
Update in progressRunnable. Recipe selection works; the rest of the update is being coded off site. Roll axle is missing.
L3 · GEA
RunningSpilling + panel resets both fixed. At 40 Hz. Needs the software only.
Claude's estimate, weighted by remaining effort. Moves live as tasks are pushed, parked or dropped.
*not associated with F1
Summary
Filters
Key
✓Latest software pulled from each line's HMI and PLC, and backed up.
▸Now: coding the new changes into each line's software, off site.
○Tuesday morning: upload each to its line, then test and troubleshoot.
No axle, no roll can be mounted - so L2 can't run a roll however ready the software is. Where did it go, and is there a spare on site or does one come from Cape Town?
The machines were supplied 6 bar flat at install; most now reach only 4-5 bar, in FP1 and FP2 - so this looks like plant-wide supply, not a filter fault. We want at least 4 bar at the machine for the chamber to seal properly under a full flow of oil. Worth Supreme checking the compressor and reticulation. Watch the incoming gauge during a cycle - it dips on start-up.
Everything learned this trip goes to our administrator in Cape Town as the feedback package; the updated SOP is sent through to the plant from there.
L1 runs a spacer short today; without both, the shaft pulls the roll skew. Sydney does not know where the missing one is, so a drawing follows from Cape Town for the workshop to make spares.
Alternative Dad saw at Finlar: pull the pipe off over the shaft and fit a stopper instead - works well. Ask if the plant has that stopper type.
Bashed in and choking flow to the filter. We suggest a long reducer with an elbow; quotation to follow.
The under-machine pipes sit under pressure and pop when spilled oil lands on them - a symptom of the spilling, not weak fittings. L3 has no catch sump (newer machines do), so oil falls straight onto the pipes; 8 Aug the bellow-vent and chamber-supply both went, one at an old braze. Fix #1 is the drying software (stops the spilling). As protection, route the vulnerable pipes inside ~20 mm stainless steel pipe; longer term, a catch sump removes the root cause.
Top alarm to replace; door lock / sensor gap to close; and the belt-exit sensor is dead while the system does not flag it - a real gap, a sensor failing silent. (Being investigated on site for a diagnosis.)
I put it to him straight - that Dad says an SOP was originally issued. First answer: "No." Then, asked whether it was before his time: "Might be before my time... by the time when I arrived here I was just a supervisor, not a foreman." I asked if the foreman might have received it and not passed it to him - "Yeah." Then twice, unprompted: "So tell him to resend it, 'cause we don't have it."
The SOP question is closed and it is not an OEM failure. Jeffrey was a supervisor when the machines went in, not the foreman, so the document never reached him - exactly Dad's archiving point. Nobody in that meeting was lying; the plant simply lost it in a handover.
It also changes the shape of Dad's email: resending is now answering a direct request from their maintenance manager, not us defending ourselves. Send the original with its date, then the new version on top of it.
He asked whether I had been through the GEA manual - I am on it now. That is the one that should show a better take-off position than the hole cut at install.
Reliability, not safety. Morné asked what the issue was and Jeffrey said "It was not working... It starts sometimes, sometimes." - one cycle fine, the next one spilling oil over the front of the filter as the chamber opened after the dry cycle. Phone support was not resolving it, so he asked for someone on site: "I said, Johan, please come down... Otherwise if you can't help us, it's better you take them out." He also said Sydney, the artisan Dad trained, had become scared to work on them - "sometimes it's just boom while it was running."
Read it as escalation language from before I arrived, not a live threat: nothing in the meeting pointed at removal, and it closed with a directive to commission Line 3 first. My read of the room is that the filters are here to stay and the whole subject is control of the safety around them.
His own read, before any of my feedback: "the problem or the issue that we sit with is, since they were installed, there was no proper SOPs, and people understand what they're doing. Am I correct in saying that?" then "Artisans and operators, they didn't have that. Do we have that now, or are we going to implement that now?" Jeffrey confirmed it - "Yeah, there was no that." So the premise was put to the room and agreed, not challenged. I said the drafts are already in motion.
Settled the next morning (see the 13 Aug note): Jeffrey was a supervisor when the machines went in, not the foreman, so the SOP never reached him - the plant lost it in a handover, which is Dad's archiving point exactly. He asked us to resend it. The new documents carry ORIGINAL ISSUE DATE and LATEST VERSION on the front page so this cannot be argued again.
Lily set out Clayton's position: he is comfortable with his operators changing the rolls and starting and stopping the oil cycles, but not with them handling blockages, faults or valves. Golliath backed it as the right arrangement - "that will be the safe way and it's actually the correct way" - with an artisan called to the machine for anything beyond normal running. Nobody in the room argued otherwise, so this is now settled with management rather than being Clayton's request alone.
I took them through both. Splatter is water left in the pipework after cleaning flashing to steam the moment it meets 180 °C oil - that one is solved and proven on Line 3, and the fix is a purge procedure that belongs to maintenance. Overflow is a different problem: the fryer's automatic top-up being bypassed. Jeffrey then raised the software side with Morné himself - after cleaning the filter will not allow a start until the water has been drained, and the screen will say why. Morné's question was simply whether that is really what it will do.
Line 3's works - Jeffrey confirmed it. Line 1 has a selector switch under the tank: left on automatic it tops up from the dirty-oil tank, but it is sitting on manual, so an operator fills by eye. Line 2's Bulldog fryer is hard-wired with no PLC and never received the automatic top-up Dad was told was being commissioned at install - a project that predates both Morné and Lily. Line 2 does already have the level sensor and two tanks, so a retrofit is realistic.
Because L3's top-up works, Morné's call was to start there, and I agreed. L3 becomes the first line commissioned, run and trained on; L1 and L2 follow once their top-ups are sorted. I still want to confirm L3's oil routing on the machine before its live run.
After Wednesday morning's spill during my own test I stopped rather than put anyone at risk. Until the top-up works, the purge procedure is in place and the training is done, I am staying hands-off the machines: software work and dry signal-only tests. I committed to Morné that the remaining software and telemetry tasks finish this weekend. Lily added the rule for when live testing resumes - Clayton close by for any in-line test in production, so if something goes wrong he is there rather than supervisors scattering.
Air supply is short across both plants - supplied at 6 bar originally, most machines now see 4-5, so it is worth Supreme checking the compressor and reticulation. The fryer-side shut-off needed for the purge sits on the operation side under the machine and should be moved so every maintenance valve is together on the filter side. I also asked for the GEA manual, to check whether there is a better take-off position than the one cut at install. On departure Morné gets the report: fittings to replace with metal, the air supply, and the outstanding mechanical items. Worth recording that this trip was the machines' first major service since installation, on all three lines. Morné closed by thanking us for the effort.
"Where you have the knowledge and the way you try to explain, it catches the attention of people to listen and understand. Your wording... it's unbelievable. You know, I've worked with a lot of contractors and what-what. You are just starting in the market, but it's like you have been in the field for many years. Keep it up."
"That's why I had to stay, and I'm going to even tell your father about it. It just blew my mind... technically when a person is saying things which have got sense, you just pick this, this, this. And the wording, the language, you just attract attention for people to listen."
He stayed behind to say it, unprompted, and he is the one who has to live with these machines after I leave. Coming from the head of maintenance - the person whose team carries the purge procedure and the wiring - that is the relationship the rest of this depends on.
Morné had asked Clayton and Selato about safety and about who is trained to operate the filters, ahead of the GM meeting. Behind that: the maintenance burn incident and the report Lily has to compile on how a repeat gets prevented. Clayton's problem is evidential - he has to be able to show that the person operating the machine was competent to. Plus a short follow-up chat with Jeffrey afterwards.
Splatter = water left after weekend cleaning flashing to steam in 180 °C+ oil (L3's problem - fixed and proven: L3 ran full production clean after a proper purge). Overflow = the fryer's auto top-up bypassed to a manual pipe (L1/L2): the filter draws ~50-60 L to fill its pipes at start, an eyeballed-full fryer then overflows on the return. Working top-ups (L3, L4) never overflow.
Operators keep what they have safely done for five years: start/stop, roll change, recipe select. The water purge becomes a maintenance procedure (~5-10 min at the start of the week). Jeffrey's shape for it: one SOP for operators and a separate one for the maintenance side. Clayton's condition is that safety officer Lily has to be able to sign his operators off against that SOP - he cannot certify them on his own.
Jeffrey's ask, twice: after cleaning, production cannot start until the water drain has run - auto-detected, no honesty button. "The machine doesn't want to start - then they realise: we need to drain it."
In the follow-up chat Jeffrey offered his team for it - he has fixed it before. His interim answer: leave the manual valve open and put the selector on automatic, and it tops up on its own all shift. I put it to Clayton that our position to the GM would be that L1's filter should not run until that is restored; he did not take a view on the messaging - his two requirements are simply that the filter runs and that it is safe to use.
L3's drying-return path (tank vs fryer) - trace the actuators with Clayton, he wants to see it. L1's original routing (Jeffrey recalls filter-return → heated dirty tank → level-controlled top-up). Oil-flow documentation for the manual - Selato asked for exactly this.
Operators attend training too - Clayton schedules who, per shift; Jeffrey joins the training WhatsApp group. Clayton's numbers: filter off = oil lasts ~1.5 days; filter on = 3-4 days. "The oil saver needs to run. It's a must."
The recipe engine and its interlock (the machine refuses to start without a recipe selected), the drying intelligence, a restored water drain from filter button on the CIP screen, and a pressure drying lamp on the Production screen so the drying phase is visible while it runs.
It now watches the chamber pressure: drying can end early once the pressure has decayed, or hold a dwell at a set pressure, instead of always running the clock out. That is the piece that stops a wet, blocked chamber being opened.
Every edit was checked against the program export rung by rung, the program compiled clean, and it was run on a simulated PLC to prove the interlock fires. Then HMI first, PLC second, same order as the July download.
The live proving cycles. Those wait on L2's fryer top-up and on the training - Line 3 goes first for commissioning. The pressure threshold also still has to be read off the machine itself; it cannot be copied from another line.