One of the things this year has blessed me with was a work visit to a factory here in Lagos. The visit to the 7up factory was work related. I am trying to introduce an environmental monitoring system to them in order to boost their security current state.
The 7up bottling company are the makers of sodas such as 7up, Mountain Dew, Pepsi and some other energy drinks with funny names like supa komando. I arrived at the factory and walked straight to the reception where I was made to identify myself and the purpose of the visit, which I did, and I was taken straight to the head of information and technology resident in the facility. It was not an interesting one because they are trying to improve their security conditions and also limiting my scope of work. The factory which is sitting on a 500sqm by 150sqm piece of land in Obakrian, Ikeja.
We started the survey by locating the exact location of the switches and taking measurements of the distance of positioning the cameras so they are not too far from the switch so they can be able to be powered. During my visit I was made to see the operations first hand and this was very educative a way tho, I was shown the “Green eagle” I don’t know why they named is so but the operations that are carried here are the manufacturing of the cork from the designing to printing the design on metal sheets and cutting into smaller bits.
The Green Eagle Building also has another administrative office in it which helps to oversee the operational excellence of the end product. From there we went to the proposed monitoring room where we intended the video wall to be placed but upon getting there I discovered that the location proposed for this won’t be able to contain the 52’ inches we are intending on installing. I did a physical assessment and discovered an abandoned video management system.
For those of us reading this post and don’t know what a video wall is?, I will briefly explain.
The video wall comprises smaller units of any dimension let’s say 5by5m and this screens can either view content individually or collectively. Some installations are different but depending on the deployment financial valuation, you can either purchase a whole screen or you can combine individual monitors together to suit the same purpose. The only difference with doing the last statement is that you have to introduce a video management system to enable easy access.
We moved to another plant room where filling and corking of the bottles by some very duty rotational machine, which before we entered you had to wear a hair covering for which is part of the requirement before you are allowed entrance, this is done so they can keep proper hygiene for the finished product and also to prevent human hair being found in of the already corked drinks. We spent a few minutes here and we moved to the next.
The PET plant we weren’t allowed in cause weren’t carrying the right passes and we ain’t a resident staff member but from the transparent windows and doors we could see big tanks in cylindrical shapes, I was told that’s more like the brain of the business. PET as they will call it is were all the edible chemical mixture takes place, I tried as much as possible to inquire on the chemical compound which they make use off but proven futile nobody knew.
The recycling plant is where all plastics bottles, glass bottles are recycled washed thoroughly and reused for packaging at some point in time, tho I didn’t see any of this been done cause the closing hour was upon us, what I discovered as we did the walk through was poor proper cabling management and poorly segmentation of the switches which might slightly disrupt maintenance when is carried out on their network or cctv cameras.
The 7up plant has three means of entry, the main entrance for staff majorly and the other two for heavy duty trucks. These trucks are loaded with finished products by a fork lift and the truck would have to pass several approval points before it can leave the premises. The presence of a gas pump on the premises made things easier for drivers to make a refill of their gas before setting it up for delivery.
