When specialty oil manufacturer Loders-Croklaan was instructed by parent company Unilever to achieve Y2K readiness for its production facility in Channahon, Ill., the company recognized an opportunity to also unify its control strategies on site and at other locations.

A large share of the Y2K process control project, which was begun in August 1998, involved unifying the controls for both continuous plant and batch processing areas and sharing collected data. The project also included an upgrade of the existing lab facilities and the installation of a new Local Area Network (LAN) with fiber optic backbone throughout the site.