More than just safe products!

As part of a sys­tem­atic plant assess­ment of Bega Group’s 19 man­u­fac­turing sites (as at FY2024), the automa­tion spe­cialist scru­ti­nised hun­dreds of plants and machines, with the focus on Safety and Indus­trial Secu­rity. The aim was to create uni­form machine safety stan­dards.

Safety aspects play a key role in the oper­a­tion of auto­mated plant and machinery: Safety stands for the highest level of safety for oper­a­tors and those in the vicinity of the machinery. This applies to newly com­mis­sioned machinery as well as sys­tems that have under­gone sig­nif­i­cant changes fol­lowing con­ver­sions or retro­fits.

Big player for milk and more

Bega Group is a renowned man­u­fac­turer of dairy, bev­er­ages and food prod­ucts across Aus­tralia and inter­na­tion­ally. Head­quar­tered in Bega, NSW, Aus­tralia, the com­pany employs approx­i­mately 3,700 people across 19 sites and gen­er­ated approx­i­mately AU$3.5 bil­lion (approx­i­mately €2 bil­lion) in rev­enue in FY2024. Its her­itage traces back to 1899 in the Bega valley.

Over the past eight years, Bega Group has expanded through numerous strategic acqui­si­tions trans­forming it into an inte­grated food man­u­fac­turer. Milk pro­cessing capacity mate­ri­ally increased, cre­ating momentum for stream­lined oper­a­tions and greater effi­ciency across the organ­i­sa­tion.

From fresh milk and cheese to spreads and juices, Bega Group’s prod­ucts pass through com­plex, auto­mated pro­duc­tion lines. Oper­a­tors oversee every step—from tanker unloading and mixing to filling, pack­aging and pal­letising.

Rapid growth to 19 sites led Bega Group to assess its facil­i­ties sys­tem­at­i­cally. Newer plants fea­ture advanced safety sys­tems, while older ones may require upgrades. Bega Group’s goal: con­sis­tent, com­pliant safety across all sites.

“Our teams should focus on their tasks, not haz­ards.” In 2020, Bega Group com­mis­sioned Pilz to con­duct com­pre­hen­sive safety assess­ments. With a 15-year rela­tion­ship and exper­tise in machinery safety, the Mel­bourne-based automa­tion spe­cialist was a nat­ural choice.

Identifying the safety requirement, suggested optimisations

As the first step, Pilz recorded the tech­nical con­di­tion, automa­tion level and safety stan­dard of the respec­tive plant and machinery at each indi­vidual site, using an iden­tical method­ology for all oper­a­tions. In the process, Pilz gath­ered suf­fi­cient usable data to enable them to iden­tify the key com­pli­ance and safety fac­tors.

In the 19 sites assessed, some of which had up to 150 plants and machines, Pilz iden­ti­fied on average, eight to ten poten­tial risk min­imi­sa­tion mea­sures for each machine – including a list of pri­or­i­ties for which mea­sures should be imple­mented first.

In phase two, indi­vidual sites com­mis­sioned Pilz to take over all or part of the risk assess­ment, design, engi­neering and val­i­da­tion of the safety equip­ment on their machines. AS/NZS 4024 stan­dards, which adopt inter­na­tional stan­dards for machinery safety such as ISO 13849–1, form the guid­ance for deter­mining if machinery meets the leg­isla­tive require­ments according to appro­priate WHS or OHS reg­u­la­tions. They refer to the func­tional safety of plant and machinery, par­tic­u­larly with regard to elec­trical, elec­tronic and pro­gram­mable elec­tronic con­trol sys­tems. They define the require­ments for the design, inte­gra­tion and val­i­da­tion of safety-rel­e­vant com­po­nents and sys­tems. The aim is to min­imise risk and ensure the safety of people, machinery and the envi­ron­ment.

Heightened awareness of dangers

The plant assess­ments and insights pro­vided by Pilz raised aware­ness of safety risks across the organ­i­sa­tion. As a result, Bega Group com­mis­sioned Pilz to train staff throughout the group in machinery safety, equip­ping them to iden­tify and mit­i­gate poten­tial haz­ards. Pilz sub­se­quently car­ried out com­pre­hen­sive training at all loca­tions, devel­oping “Cham­pions within the Busi­ness” to serve as in-house machine safety experts.

Pilz’s Machi­ne­SAFE Com­pre­hen­sive course pro­vided fun­da­mental aware­ness-raising for oper­ating and ser­vice per­sonnel in terms of Machinery Safety. Aimed at begin­ners, the course is based on the Aus­tralian stan­dard AS 4024 – Safety of Machinery. The course teaches the basics of inter­na­tional and national safety stan­dards and intro­duces risk assess­ment methods. At the same time, it pro­vides an overview of the type and appli­ca­tion of indi­vidual safety com­po­nents.

The CMSE course (“Cer­ti­fied Machinery Safety Expert”) from Pilz was aimed at qual­i­fied Bega Group per­sonnel with pre­vious knowl­edge, such as plant and machinery oper­a­tors, system inte­gra­tors, engi­neers and main­te­nance per­sonnel, and pro­vided in-depth safety exper­tise. In coop­er­a­tion with TÜV NORD, this is com­bined with a glob­ally recog­nised TÜV cer­tifi­cate in the field of Machinery Safety.

Spirit of Safety brought to life

By com­pleting the courses, Bega Group training del­e­gates have deep­ened their knowl­edge along the entire machine life cycle – from legal require­ments through to func­tional safety. Thanks to the inter­me­diate courses and hands-on training pro­vided by Pilz, Bega Group employees are better equipped to answer ques­tions related to Machinery Safety and inde­pen­dently carry out tasks that lead to the imple­men­ta­tion of safety mea­sures. Having trained and qual­i­fied its in-house safety experts in this way, Bega Group can per­ma­nently embed the new safety cul­ture within the com­pany. “The knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of the Pilz team have brought the ‘Spirit of Safety’ to life at the Bega Group,” says Neil Roberts, sum­marising.