Pictures of the Future    Fall 2006

Technology on Tap

Whether its beer with guarana or mineral water with papaya, the ability to create and perfect new beverages is possible only with perfectly organized systems. Siemens has standardized key hardware and software components, thus enabling breweries and soft drink producers to achieve the highest levels of production quality.

With Totally Integrated Automation (TIA), Siemens offers hardware and software solutions for automation and drive technology that are attuned to one another. "Every part of the system should communicate flawlessly with every other, not just during start-up and daily production, but also if alterations and upgrades are required at a later stage," explains Rüdiger Selig of Siemens’ Food & Beverage Competence Center. "That’s the reason why we fully integrate all the hardware and software for operating each facility."

Selig calls this the optimized packaging plant. The components of such a system work reliably while producing beverages in large quantities. They also keep costs for spare parts storage low and are flexible when it comes to making adjustments—an important factor when regulations change. Since the introduction of the can deposit in Germany, for instance, sales of beverage cans have plummeted from 7.5 billion (2002) to 500 million (2005).

In addition, quality- and health-conscious customers are always on the look-out for improved products. As far as the beer sector is concerned, there is a trend toward light drinks. In addition, young consumers are increasingly turning to alternative beer with flavorings. Exotic mixtures include Guarana with and without caffeine, passion fruit and winter orange kumquat. In alcohol-free drinks, there are flavors such as pomegranate, pineapple-papaya, apple-guava and peach-lychee.

But new production plants are rarely built in order to expressly meet evolving tastes. On the contrary, many beverage producers still rely on antiquated facilities, and in general, older facilities are upgraded on a machine-by-machine basis by a range of system suppliers.

In view of this, it is difficult to consider the production process as a whole and to control it efficiently so that it is cost-optimized. After all, a comprehensive process control system that can access all of a beverage’s production steps—from delivery of raw materials to the time the goods leave the plant—requires the use of standardized data formats and appropriate communication structures.

This is precisely why, in the case of TIA, Siemens has set up a hierarchically designed hardware and software system that is organized from the uppermost control level down to each individual pressure sensor. "Imagine the entire pyramid, with the field, automation, manufacturing execution system, and enterprise resource planning levels," says Selig. In other words, at the very bottom—on the field level—are pressure or temperature sensors and actuators such as valves. Above this on the automation level is a system controller like the Braumat PCS7 process control system. The latter ensures that the processes in the brewing room and in the fermentation and storage cellars are error-free and reproducible. The third level, the MES (manufacturing execution system), is a production control system like Simatic IT. It enables plant operators to retrieve data onto their PCs and check whether everything is running according to plan.

The MES can also transmit data as needed to the top of the pyramid, the ERP (enterprise resource planning). Here, software handles planning and management tasks—for example, the purchasing of raw materials, sales or personnel planning.

Bus in the Brewery. For decades, production and filling systems were regulated mechanically by operating personnel. But today, machines have programmable logic controllers. For optimal production flow, individual machines must be able to communicate with one another.

Initially, this was achieved with direct lines. But now, bus systems are used on the automation level because they are cheaper and require less maintenance. The production control system level (MES) uses the same Ethernet—known for its cost-effectiveness and reliability—that is used for office communication between system components.

"One of the challenges in brewing is that different system components in the beverage industry use different automation and communication systems," says Selig. "Even with very new systems, we have to advise producers and machine suppliers that for the overall production plant, it’s more efficient to use uniform systems." A renowned international soft drink producer has already been reaping the fruits of such an approach. During an expansion of its filling systems in Montreal and Moscow, this producer used only control and communication technology from Siemens, thus fulfilling the optimal conditions for a continuous automation concept. The producer’s associated packaging machine manufacturers also use Siemens components.

In such cases, the payoff for the customer can be considerable. With an investment of $15 million in total, the customer can probably save $300,000 to $400,000 due to lower construction costs, easier assembly, quick start-up and reduced need for training. In addition, lower capital and working costs in conjunction with higher efficiency and availability can result in further savings of $200,000 to $400,000 per year in operating costs.

There are also possibilities for optimization on the MES level, such as in quality assurance. In cooperation with Siemens, international standards organizations such as the IEC have defined which functions an MES must fulfill, specified the associated interfaces, and codified a standard. Siemens developed its MES Simatic IT on this basis. The Simatic IT Production Suite includes all functionalities for visualization, maintenance, production and storage. With the help of Simatic IT Unilab, a company can manage all of its quality-related data. As a result, particular products can be assigned measurement and regulation data such as which beer bottle was filled from which tank and when.

What’s Brewing in Europe. Siemens has decades of experience on the automation level. The Braumat process control system, for instance, which was developed for breweries, fits seamlessly into the TIA concept. Its outstanding property is that it can control even the discontinuous, recipe-controlled processes common in breweries. Experts can develop recipes for new brands, change and adjust processes and parameters such as volumes, temperatures and times, and access this data time and again.

Braumat is used in more than 900 breweries worldwide, including the Stiegl brewery in Salzburg. With a market share of 11 %, it is Austria’s largest private brewery. Stiegl boasts the most modern brewing room in Europe—and it is full of technology from Siemens. "Computer-supported brewing and fermentation management helps us to balance out natural fluctuations in raw materials and achieve as consistent a level of quality as possible," explains Master Brewer Ernst Schreiner. "This allows us to enhance the typical qualities of our different beers in a consistent way. Our work has become much easier with the new brewing room."

In the meantime, the evolution of Totally Integrated Automation continues. "In a few years, the automation level will be merged with the level of the production control system," asserts Selig with confidence. "When that happens, it will be possible to simply connect any new system parts to an Ethernet interface. As a result, it will be possible to install the parts of a filling system almost as easily as a new network printer today." And that’s certainly good news for thirsty people.
                                                                                                              Bernhard Gerl