A mid-sized plastics molding manufacturer, operating in a high-throughput environment, relied heavily on a series of mixing machines to prepare batches for production. These machines ran on legacy PLCs with no connection to their broader IT or operational systems — leaving them isolated, undocumented, and invisible to management.

Without a SCADA platform or real-time dashboards, plant leaders were forced to make critical decisions based on outdated spreadsheets and verbal operator reports.

Engineering resources were stretched thin and lacked the expertise to design and deploy a modern, integrated solution. The result: recurring blind spots, delayed reaction to production issues, and missed opportunities to optimize batch consistency and performance.

Lack of centralized visibility created a costly blind spot and inhibited smart decision-making. This led to serious pain points:

• Operations managers had no visibility into the live status of mixing processes

• Performance issues went unnoticed until production was affected

• All decisions were based on manual logs and delayed reports

• Engineering couldn’t support new requests due to lack of bandwidth

• Management was left reactive, rather than proactive

• ⚙️ Upgraded legacy PLCs to modern hardware

• 🌐 Integrated the equipment with Ignition SCADA

• 📊 Built custom dashboards for plant managers and executives

• 🔔 Implemented real-time alerts, KPIs, and historical trends

• 🧠 Trained internal staff for ongoing use and support

Management has instant access to mixing performance, from both the floor and the front office. Live dashboards show status, operator performance, batch progress, and more. Downtime alerts surface issues before they spiral. And with the Ignition infrastructure in place, the company is now ready to scale these dashboards to other equipment and even other facilities. What was once a black hole is now a centralized decision-driving system.