Zip Water is known for their flagship product, the Zip HydroTap, which can dispense boiling, chilled and sparking water through a single tap. With swelling demand, Zip Water needed to ramp up production and had a strong commitment to maintaining operations in Sydney.
SoftWire Systems was responsible for the design and development of the Production Stations, including the mechanical frames and electrical cabinets. Test Stations were designed around the NI CompactDAQ platform. A LabVIEW based test sequencer is able to step through individual tests, to ensure that production parameters are within limits. These applications require tight integration with both the SFPS and a Conveyor PLC.
For assembly stations, touchscreen applications were designed by SoftWire Systems that require minimal interaction by the operator, whose primary focus is to perform the assembly step (as per work instructions which are displayed on-screen).
SoftWire Systems developed the Shop Floor Production System (SFPS) for Zip Water to handle the data management of products, processes and equipment. This system connects to shop floor production equipment using Web Services, collecting detailed production records and integrating with backend ERP systems.
The core services for the SFPS are hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, offering the benefits of high availability and security, ability to scale for capacity demands and access to Microsoft Azure platform services including reporting and advanced analytics.
For this project, SoftWire Systems was involved on two distinct parallel tasks. Our systems integrators worked on the productions stations while our cloud engineers developed the data infrastructure. Both teams collaborated with Zip Water, and each other, to ensure smooth integration.
This project was recognised as a finalist in the 2020 Australian Engineering Excellence Awards as a result of the quality outcomes delivered.
As of 2024, the conveyor line is able to run production parts with higher throughput and flexibility. Through the use of the SFPS, engineers and operators are aligned in their production activities. Additional processes have subsequently been integrated into the conveyor line, while the Shop Floor Production System has been rolled out across legacy lines at Zip Water to take advantage of improved workflow management and data capture.
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