Automation and process control that was once the stuff of film fantasy is now reality in the food and drink sector, yet there’s room always for constant improvement.
In the era of craft beers, good marketing favours the brewer that can convey the image of the lone individual with a dream and passion for quality and innovation.
But for Keijo Pyo?ra?la?, liquids measurements business development manager at Finnish industrial measurement experts Vaisala, once a product is developed, consistency comes foremost.
Traditionally, ensuring this came down to a combination of lab analysis and manual sampling on site. These actions, however, present brakes as well as boosts to the production process, he points out. “From a production perspective, sampling and analysis can be of limited value because of the cost and the delay incurred – by the time a lab result uncovers a problem, a significant volume of product may have already passed through the brewery,” says Pyo?ra?la?.
There’s also the conundrum that, useful as samples may seem, they are nonetheless only a snapshot of the overall process, he points out. They are “unable to support feedback control, provide timely alarms or uncover trends”.
Vaisala is one of many companies addressing the demand for continuous monitoring and fast response analysis that food and drink manufacturers seek in order to improve productivity and limit downtime.
It goes without saying that Industry 4.0 has transformed the capacity to perform such tasks. Yet, suggests Keith Thornhill, head of food and beverage for Siemens UK & Ireland, while the technology and processes exist, it’s a moot point whether businesses are properly able to harness the benefits.
“Without the data to help measure operations, it is often difficult – or impossible – to know where further investment is needed,” he states.
“Until manufacturers have an accurate real-time view of production, they have no benchmark of production efficiency and therefore a limited idea of the performance benefits and scale of improvement that can be gained. Expertise is needed to help turn data into actionable intelligence.”
It’s hardly as if the concepts are new, he points out, referencing Siemens’ 4004 computer’s walk-on role in the 1971 children’s film classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“Fifty years ago, Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory was pure imagination,” he said. “Today, that level of automation and digitalisation is within reach of manufacturers, regardless of size. But the industry must adopt these changes soon.”
A focused approach to objectives and goals helps users refine automation and digitalisation strategy, whether the aim is avoidance of downtime, energy efficiency, production quality and consistency – or, more likely, all of these factors.
And the enduring requirement is a commitment to regular change as data systems and processes become outdated.
Brewer Dogfish Head’s rapid success since its inception in 1995 to the present, at which point it produces more than a quarter of a million beer barrels annually, required rapid adaptation.
The US firm moved to a single automation system from a manual hop dosing process only to find it became obsolete, with the potential for downtime and cybersecurity issues.
Switching to a ProLeiT system boosted energy management and introduced integrated recipe control for liquids. Management then opted for the ftServer from Stratus Technologies as their best guarantee of eradicating downtime.
Technology [is] ideal for supporting post-Covid era grocery warehouse operations which are facing demands from growing e-commerce channels
Frazer Watson, UK – Ireland country manager, iFollow UK
The product’s ‘hot-swappable’ customer-replaceable units evaded the need for shutdown before switching, while the virtual platform reduced the required servers from the previous six to one.
For consistency of a different sort, Vaisala’s K-PATENTS sanitary refractometers have ensured their brewery clients the opportunity to monitor all stages of the process without the measurement errors caused by fouling and interference from larger suspended particles, particularly in the mashing and lautering stages.
Not only does this offer a high level of accuracy, indicates Pyo?ra?la?, but also a speedy response that provides a competitive edge in fulfilling packing and filling as well as clean-in-place procedures.
Vitally, in an era of niche production, the refractometers offer a bespoke service to suit the needs of individual plants, he adds: “Each Vaisala refractometer is factory calibrated for the full measurement range, which means they can be freely interchanged between installation locations without parameter changes. Furthermore, the Vaisala refractometers do not require any routine recalibration or maintenance.”
The perishable nature of their goods only enhances the benefits of addressing production processes in a holistic fashion rather than piecemeal, points out Siemens’ Thornhill.
“Conditions need to be controlled to optimise quality and throughput. And parameters, such as humidity and heat, as well as supply chain variability, need to be monitored as part of root cause analysis. Uncontrolled variability is normally the reason why production lines stop unintentionally.”
For one bakery customer that meant fulfilling the goal of saving more than £1 million annually by improving its chilling process; for Norfolk-based chocolate manufacturer Kinnerton, it was an integrated solution providing streams of data from simple conveyor belts to sophisticated ‘pick and place’ packing robots with centrally-connected manufacturing processes that boosted productivity on one line 15%.
Thornhill’s colleague, business development manager for digitalisation Saad Waqar, says the holistic approach to digitalisation remains key.
Begin, he advises, with data collection. Determine its purpose (real-time visualisation/long-term analytics?) and where it will be stored (the Cloud, the Edge?). Then comes the analytics.
“It’s here you try and make sense of it all,” Waqar explains. “For every data point to capture you will be missing others. In order to make sense of what you already have, you will have to keep going back to collect more data.
“The more data, the better the AI. You need a lot of data to make decisions. This is where industrial Edge computing helps. It collects and analyses data at the machine level to provide live status and diagnostic information about a machine’s underlying systems.
“It allows you to change the data and run again. It’s a loop and you must feed the process to continually optimise,” Waqar explains.
Brexit and the pandemic have, predictably, increased concern about the vulnerability of supply chains within the process sectors but most of all upon those such as food and drink or pharma, for whom ingredients and products are especially time sensitive.
In turn this has focused manufacturers more upon improving storage and distribution issues by harnessing automation and IIoT.
Bakery chain Greggs recently boosted its delivery capacity with the completion of its new automated coldstore sandwiched between its two manufacturing units at the firm’s Balliol Business Park site in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Designed by Clegg Food Projects – specialists in capital projects for the food sector – it includes a 32 metre-high automated frozen store. The twentieth CAPEX scheme completed by Clegg for Greggs and boasting a cumulative value of £100 million, the overall project is a 24 hour ‘lights out’ facility with six new loading docks and nine levels of automation.
Senior project manager at Greggs, Peter Boughton, said the gains would be both commercial and environmental.
He commented: “We are very pleased with the coldstore as it enables us to free up space in the existing facility and improve the distribution efficiency to our stores. Designed with sustainability in mind, this project highlights our commitment to Net Zero Greggs with carbon efficiency considered at every stage of the construction process.”
Until manufacturers have an accurate real-time view of production, they have no benchmark of production efficiency and therefore a limited idea of the performance benefits and scale of improvement
Keith Thornhill, head of food and beverage, Siemens UK & Ireland
And while the UK and France may struggle to find agreement at governmental level, French firm iFollow aims to build on its recent contract with “a major UK grocery retailer” to transform UK grocery logistics, employing its brand of autonomous mobile robots for the warehouse that it claims can increase operational productivity between 28% and 42.5%.
“iFollow’s technology [is] ideal for supporting post-Covid era grocery warehouse operations which are facing demands for ever-shorter delivery times from growing e-commerce channels as well as store orders,” states iFollow UK – Ireland country manager Frazer Watson.
At just 17cm tall, the iFollow AMRs are claimed to be appreciably smaller than their competitors, withstand travelling on rough floors, can handle two roll cages at once and operate in temperatures ranging from -25°C to +40°C without degradation of battery life.
Combining camera and QR code navigation, they can transport loads of up to 1,000kg when receiving, despatching and order picking goods. Crucially, the robots can also perform in coldstores and have a battery life which operates for 16 hours, with a full charge from 10% to 100% requiring one and a half hours.
Imagination aside, the greatest impediment for manufacturers contemplating the fully digitalised future is going to be cost. Siemens’ Thornhill is adamant that a greater price will accrue from failing to act.
“Thinking longer term is important, and this is where smart investments through smart finance can support businesses that are keen to invest in modernisation, but don’t have the cash flow to pay for it all up front,” he emphasises.
“Recent research from our financial services business showed that the window of opportunity to gain competitive advantages through digitalisation investments is narrow- ing, with a ‘tipping point’ of around five years, after which manufacturers will be playing catch-up.”
