Jotun increases efficiency with fully-automated paint manufacturing process

Jotun develops, produces and sells cost-effective paint and coatings products, and provides customer service and technical support, to residential, marine and industrial markets worldwide.

When Jotun modernized one of its Norwegian production plants, it chose a system based on GE Digital's Proficy Batch Execution.

The fully-automated plant manufactures as much as a plant with five times the labor force.

Jotun is a Norwegian Group with 4,500 employees and 36 production plants in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, South Africa and the USA. The Group has an annual turnover of about NOK 5.5billion.

“Our largest product area in the Scandinavian countries is decorative paints - interior and exterior house paints,” says Jan Lorentzen, Senior Engineer in charge of evaluating and buying automation services. "The decorative paint segment answers for most of the turnover in the Middle East as well. We are the market leader in marine coatings for the shipping industry in the rest of the world."

There are four production plants in Norway, two of which are in Sandefjord, home to the Group’s head office. One of the plants in Sandefjord, Vindals plant, was converted into a fully-automated batch plant, built around Proficy Batch Execution, iFIX HMI/SCADA and other GE Digital products, in conjunction with GE Digital partner, Novotek.

No one is present in the rooms where the paint is manufactured. Production is recipe-controlled, and the recipe for each batch is transferred from a master database. Novotek not only supplied the software for the batch system at the Vindals plant, but also handled all programming and commissioning.

At the Vindals plant, 12-13 million litres of paint are manufactured every year, and about 20 people work at the plant. Compare this with the second plant in Sandefjord, which is not as automated and manufactures several products which, in terms of volume, correspond approximately to the same volume of paint but require about 100 employees.

Jotun’s partnership with Novotek began many years ago. Today, the company has GE Digital software solutions from Novotek at several production plants. In addition to Jotun’s plants in Sandefjord, GE Digital
products are used in Frederikstad, Dubai, Thailand and at the plant on the outskirts of Shanghai in China.

“The main reason for using Novotek as our supplier so often over the years is their ability to understand our needs and collaborate,” concludes Jan Lorentzen. “Obviously Novotek’s products are good, but the deciding factor is the people at the company - their flexibility and customer orientation.”

Download the Jotun customer story.