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How is technology serving up new opportunities in food and beverage?
Author : By Martin Walder, VP Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric
07 February 2020
The food and beverage industry is entering one of its most challenging decades. Costs continue to rise, and customer demands have never been higher. To meet these challenges, producers need to find ways to be flexible to client needs whilst considering every single way to increase efficiency, to remain competitive. The key to this efficiency is digital transformation.
If you work in food and beverage manufacturing, you continually have to manage your priorities. From a consumer perspective, manufacturers must deliver a diversity of products and smaller batch numbers, whilst not ignoring the quality and traceability of ingredients within the product.
Simultaneously, manufacturers must optimise and improve existing processes and equipment and evaluate how innovations in automation and robotics/cobotics for example could move business forward.
Automation and robotics: One of the keys to success
By using the latest digital technology on the factory floor and driving the convergence of this OT technology with IT systems, food and beverage businesses can create the platform to improve their productivity exponentially.
Enter automation and robotics.
Regardless of the fact we are not building many greenfield factories in the UK – businesses must consider digitising their existing plants as they are today. This can take the form of adding additional digital secondary sensing to existing machines/lines and or integrating modern automation and robotic systems within existing facilities and of course linking these to information systems for analysis and decision making. Providing real time data from across an enterprise, especially when combined with historic information and third-party data can provide the input for AI and/or humans to make valuable decisions.
The quality and reliability of power is critical to any production facility and as we move into a world where will have to closely manage demand against a variable supply, the connection of energy and automation systems and the integrated management of them will become critical for highly optimising productivity.
Food and beverage production is always at risk from human error, which can inevitably cause downtime, poor quality, product loss and worst of all dissatisfied customers, ultimately increasing costs.
The more the process can be automated including the introduction of robotics and ‘cobotics’ – compact, easy-to-use and collaborative robots to work alongside humans – the more the risk can be reduced.
As automation developers introduce better sensing capability and more responsive safety systems, the application of robotic equipment in this space will only increase – paving the way for improved interaction so that complex processes can be completed faster, more easily and more safely. We are getting ever closer to the ‘lights out’ manufacturing plant.
The use of robotics and automation ultimately creates more jobs as businesses become more successful. With new roles being in manufacturing technology & processes, IT, sales, marketing, logistics.
Many factories today are made up of a series of unconnected systems and processes. As we become more digital and connect them there will be a marked contrast in efficiency levels compared to those before new technology implementation. Adopting new technology will provide unprecedented visibility into productions, and the actionable data you need to be more agile in response to market demands – at a much lower cost.
Meet the new generation of integrated robot and machine control
Over the last twenty years, The Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) has been a vital tool in the process of materials handling and packaging internationally. The advantage of utilising a singular range of equipment has allowed end users to benefit from reduced downtime and has increased long term efficiency. However, due to the increased demands of speed and flexibility of packaging lines, an issue has come to light over whether traditional PLCs are still fit for purpose.
As packaging has become the most fertile ground for added profit in food and beverage, there are increasing demands for faster lines that require multiple robots and sequenced motion axes. There is an ever-compelling case for the use of automation and robotics as access to low cost labour gets more difficult, the minimum wage increases and there is more focus on health and safety whilst at the same time the cost of the technology is reducing.
Due to the demand for automation, PLC-based control is being replaced by a new generation of high-performance integrated motion and robotic controllers also with PLC sequence capability. These can handle more complex applications, at higher production speeds and in a smaller space. Not only this but there is also fast payback and better return-on-investment.
Certain technologies including Schneider Electric’s compact PacDrive3 can drive success. With just one controller, it is possible to control a series of Schneider Electric’s picking robots, maybe 5 or 6 – as well as a wrapping machine. Additionally, to the high-performance controller the integrated motor/drive combination used to drive the robots can remove 100s of metres of cable and multiple control cabinets. The benefits truly are second to none.
To remain competitive and profitable amongst other food and beverage manufacturers, plants and machines will have to become smarter, better connected and more efficient to keep up with increasing demand. Only then will they be able to be adapt to the changing industrial landscape.
To learn more about F&B2 and power up your food and beverage production, download our eBook HERE.
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