Well, I work for Diageo at the Kilmarnock bottling plant.
This is better known locally as Johnnie Walker’s.
You may have heard of us……….
Ok, down to the details, I’m an electrician at the aforementioned plant.
The plant bottles most of the blended varieties of the Johnnie Walker family. These range from the traditional Red label , Black label and the more expensive brands such as Gold label and Blue label. We also bottle Dimple, J&B Rare, Jet and brands like Premier, Windsor and Buchanans, as well as malts like Cardhu and Johnnie Walker malt. All in all, a very impressive portfolio of brands, although I haven’t mentioned all that we bottle!! As you can imagine, we take a lot of care that the product is presented well and the quality is high.
To accomplish this, the plant goes through regular upgrades of machinery to try and ensure that what we bottle is consistently high quality. These upgrades can be of imaging equipment which check the labeling on the bottles and fill heights . Not only does the machinery check the production but as an added failsafe, operators constantly check and recheck for errors. It wouldn’t do for someone to find a flaw with one of our bottles.
So , what exactly do I do all day……..a question echoed by many…..
Part of my job is to try and achieve the continuing performance of the machines electrically . More or less, repair it as quickly as possible.
However, I could also be involved with installing new equipment, modifying or trying to improve existing machinery .
As you can imagine, the job can get involved……..
When I first became an electrician, my main tools were screwdrivers, but, over the years and as equipment has evolved, these have been supplanted by more esoteric tools such as laptop programmers. Nowadays, you’re as likely to see an electrician peering into a monitor as wielding a screwdriver.
The Kilmarnock plant is no exception and the current trend for line control systems, laser marking and imaging systems ensure a quality product, so a continual learning process is also involved for everyone. Even the displays have come a long way, with touch screens and GUI’s becoming the norm nowadays . I can remember when it was a plate with lights on it and drawings of machines, although these still exist, they are on the way out as far as new equipment goes.
Panels used to be filled with relays and now are replaced by PLC’s and the likes of profibus connections.
With computers doubling in speed every couple of years, it is no surprise that industry has turned the same way and the larger processing power means we can now control bottle flow, fill rates etc more exactly and efficiently.
Brute strength and ignorance are giving way to more elegant ways to perform the same tasks.
Where motors used to be direct online contactor units, they are now controlled using invertor units which can ramp motor speeds and torques in fractions of a second to minimise bottle clash and spill. You wouldn’t want a bottle that was weakened by constant hitting against others. It’s a lot of money to lose if the bottle you purchased with your hard earned cash, either isn’t closed properly or has damaged labels because of these sort of things. So our company tends to buy the best equipment in its field. We feel we are the market leaders, so we try and ensure that we stay that way.
Safety systems have also become a lot more involved, these can include man entry units. This term has, so far, managed to escape the politically correct brigade……displays used to be MMI (man machine interface) and are now HMI. A sign of the times !
Electrical safety has progressed over the years as well with RCD protection the norm, which means that instead of showers of sparks when something goes wrong, you probably only notice because the machine grinds to a halt. As a very small aside, the showers of sparks you see in the likes of American movies etc tend not to happen in Britain, which has an altogether different system of electrical protection on mains supply………….
As you can see from this very brief overview, an awful lot of new things for people to learn to use and understand. It makes for a very varied range of skills and knowledge.
The Kilmarnock plant is a blend of the old and new. Aged whiskey and modern bottling lines. A far cry from the days when people handled the bottles manually and more or less did everything by hand. Pictures of the original plant layout and bottling still exist in displays around the factory, but they really bear no reality nowadays and it seems very strange to see how things were done long ago.
Machines now load the finished product with computers controlling the transfer and amounts of whiskey being held and moved onsite.
Information on the production is keyed into the company network system existing everywhere onsite as well and displayed or called up wherever and whenever required. All product can now be tracked from the very beginning to point of sale. This in itself is a major step forward and has been happening gradually over the years.
There are very few elements of the business nowadays that don’t involve computers to a large degree.
And I help to keep all this moving………well, some of it.
I could extol the virtues for a while yet, but I don’t want to put anyone off by being evangelistic.
Suffice to say, that in the present day, my job is much more involved and thought provoking than in the past. It is certainly much better to work as an electrician nowadays than when I first became one. It’s a lot cleaner , just for one reason.
Of course, it also helps if you work for a Company such as mine
Now…………..What do you do………..
PC Technical Editor
