Legacy SCADA replacement
Phased migration from an unsupported SCADA to a modern, documented platform — without losing a shift of production or any historical trend data.
Industry · Manufacturing
Production lines engineered for throughput, traceability and uptime.
From food and beverage to FMCG, automotive components, packaging, plastics and metals — Promation SA delivers the automation, electrical and data infrastructure that keeps modern South African manufacturing running at full capacity, shift after shift.
Industry Challenges
Manufacturing in South Africa is hard. Operations should not be the reason.
Tight margins, skills shortages, load-shedding, ageing control systems, ESG pressure and customer traceability demands all collide on the plant floor. We design automation, electrical and information systems that absorb these pressures instead of amplifying them — and that your maintenance team can actually own once we hand over.
Unplanned downtime
Undocumented PLC logic, ageing instrumentation and reactive maintenance bleed availability and damage customer commitments.
Power instability
Load-shedding, dips and surges damage VSDs, lose batches, corrupt recipes and shorten asset life.
Traceability pressure
Retailers, exporters and regulators demand batch, lot, allergen and quality data that legacy systems cannot produce on demand.
Limited operational visibility
OEE, downtime, scrap and quality data trapped on operator log sheets — never available in time to act.
Skills attrition
Senior technicians retiring, integrators that have moved on and tribal knowledge that leaves at the gate.
Rising energy cost
Compressed air leaks, idling motors and out-of-tariff demand peaks consuming margin invisibly.
Common Operational Problems
What we hear from the plant floor.
01
Nobody knows the real OEE on the line
Capex, staffing and pricing decisions are made on gut feel because downtime, performance and quality losses are not measured consistently across shifts and SKUs.
02
The original integrator has left the building
Critical PLC and SCADA code is undocumented, source files are missing and the people who wrote it are gone — every change becomes a production risk.
03
Recipes and changeovers consume entire shifts
Manual setpoint changes between SKUs introduce variability, scrap and lost hours that should be producing sellable product.
04
Quality holds spike without warning
Out-of-spec product is caught at QC instead of in-process, costing scrap, rework, customer credits and trust.
05
Electrical infrastructure is at its limit
Switchboards, cabling and protection were sized for the plant ten years ago — not the higher-power, higher-cycle line you run today.
06
Maintenance is reactive, not planned
Critical motors, gearboxes and instruments run to failure because there is no condition data and no structured planning loop.
07
Audit prep takes weeks of manual effort
Quality, food-safety and retailer audits are met with binders and spreadsheets pulled together by senior staff for days at a time.
Promation SA Solutions
How we solve them.
01
Automation modernisation
Vendor-agnostic PLC, SCADA and HMI upgrades engineered for maintainability, uptime and operator clarity.
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Electrical infrastructure
Switchgear, MCC and reticulation upgrades to support modern, higher-power, higher-availability lines.
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OEE & MES integration
Real downtime, performance and quality data fed into MES, ERP and BI — replacing log sheets with live dashboards.
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Production monitoring
Shift-by-shift dashboards, alarms and reports so issues are caught and escalated before they become losses.
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Recipe & batch control
ISA-88 aligned batch and recipe management for repeatable, audit-ready production across multi-SKU lines.
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OT/IT convergence
Secure, segmented industrial networks connecting plant systems to business systems without exposing them.
Explore serviceBenefits
Outcomes we engineer for.
Lower downtime
Structured fault handling, remote diagnostics and pre-emptive alarms materially cut MTTR across the plant.
Higher OEE
Real-time visibility into the three big losses — availability, performance and quality — at line, area and plant level.
Audit-ready traceability
Per-batch records ready for retailer, exporter, regulator and insurer review without weeks of preparation.
Resilient operation
Backup power, surge protection and graceful-degradation logic keep critical batches intact through grid events.
Example Use Cases
Representative engagements.
Illustrative use cases that typify the kind of work Promation SA delivers in this sector.
OEE rollout across mixed lines
Consistent OEE measurement, dashboards and shift reports rolled out across an existing plant with mixed PLC vendors and varied data quality.
MCC and reticulation upgrade
Replacement of an end-of-life motor control centre with documented, FAT-tested switchgear, improved protection coordination and arc-flash mitigation.
Batch and recipe modernisation
Structured recipe management introduced for a multi-SKU process — measurably cutting changeover time, scrap and operator error.
Utility sub-metering programme
Sub-metering across electricity, compressed air, steam and water to identify and eliminate hidden cost drivers and out-of-tariff peaks.
In-process quality control
Live SPC and quality data linked to PLC setpoints so out-of-spec trends trigger intervention before product is lost.
Predictive maintenance pilot
Vibration and current-signature monitoring on critical motors and gearboxes feeding a structured maintenance planning loop.
Plant-to-ERP integration
Real production, scrap and downtime data feeding SAP / Sage / Syspro automatically — eliminating manual capture and reconciliation.
Why Promation SA
The right partner for manufacturing.
Engineering depth, sector familiarity and single-contract accountability — the combination most operators in this industry struggle to find.
Vendor-agnostic engineering
We specify what is right for the plant — Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, Mitsubishi, Omron — not what suits a single OEM relationship.
Plant-floor practical
Senior engineers who have commissioned, debugged and lived on real lines, not just designed them on paper or in a sales office.
Compliance by default
SANS, OHS Act, machinery directives and food-safety expectations baked into every design — not retrofitted before audit.
Shutdown-aware planning
Cutovers, phased migrations and shutdown windows planned around your production calendar, with rehearsed fallbacks.
FAQ
Common questions.
Will modernisation cost us shifts of production?
We plan migrations as phased cutovers with parallel running, shutdown-window work and rehearsed fallbacks, so production impact is predictable, agreed up front and minimised.
Can you work with mixed PLC vendors?
Yes. Our team is genuinely multi-vendor across Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, Mitsubishi and Omron — including integrating them under a single SCADA, historian or MES layer.
How do you handle load-shedding for critical processes?
We design hybrid backup architectures — UPS, generator, BESS and prioritised load-shedding logic — so critical loops stay up, batches survive grid events and restart is controlled.
Can you connect plant data to our ERP?
Yes. We integrate with SAP, Sage, Syspro and bespoke ERPs via secure middleware, with auditable interfaces and no direct production-database coupling that creates fragility.
Do you support FSSC 22000, HACCP or BRCGS audits?
Yes. Our automation and data architecture is designed with food-safety and retailer audit requirements in mind — including allergen control, lot traceability and CCP recording.
Will my maintenance team be able to support it?
Yes. Code is structured to internal standards, fully documented, version-controlled and accompanied by operator and technician training during handover.
How is a project priced?
After a scoped assessment we quote a fixed-price specification phase, then a fixed-price build and commissioning phase against the signed-off scope — no open-ended T&M on the critical path.
Book a Consultation
Discuss manufacturing with a senior engineer.
Start with a free 15-minute discovery call. We'll review your situation and outline practical next steps — at no cost.