World record: Biggest brewery equipped with new automation technology

Just one weekend to install the upgrade BRAUMAT V5.3 S7.

Although there is no comparable project anywhere in the world, this coup certainly sounds like a new record: A team from the ZIEMANN GROUP, assisted by two SIEMENS experts, managed to upgrade the world’s largest brewery with the latest state-of-the-art automation technology in less than 3 days. They replaced the BRAUMAT V4.0 S5 with BRAUMAT V5.3 S7 and also changed the hardware at the same time. There had never been an upgrade of this scale before.

Mission Impossible? Not for the automation experts of the ZIEMANN GROUP. At the »Cervecera de Zacatecas«, the largest brewery in the world which was erected by ZIEMANN and has been operating trouble-free since 1996, the management may have had mixed feelings about the scheduled deadline. The set task was immense: in the brewhouse with an annual output of approx. 22 million hl. of beer, it was not only the complete brewhouse, malt intake and cellar that were to be equipped with the new process control system BRAUMAT S7, also all central areas of the brewery were to be fitted with new hardware. The greatest challenge of all: the control system for each of the 175 tanks in Zacatecas had to be updated. And all the work carried out during the production stop of one single weekend?

The plan was set and the eight ZIEMANN engineers and two SIEMENS experts started to work with zest and vigor around the clock. »That was our biggest conversion ever«, Martin Friz, head of ZIEMANN Process Automation, commented on the job. »And we even finished well within the deadline given by our client.« The Grupo Modelo had actually estimated four days for the upgrade. But already after 62 hours the team from Ludwigsburg gave the go-ahead that the automatic brewing production was ready to resume full operations. All in all 36 new PCs, six servers and the complete software had been installed.

With the conversion to BRAUMAT S7 the brewery can draw on the huge advancement in automation technology. The new system is not only faster, with the changeover from Windows® NT to XP it is also easier and less expensive to maintain. The investment is therefore quickly amortized.

The upgrade operation once again underscores the trust the Grupo Modelo has in ZIEMANN know-how. The management left the team from Ludwigsburg in full charge of the plant during the upgrade. This confidence was justified. Francisco Gómez, head of automation and electrical engineering at the Grupo Modelo, put it like this: »The cooperation with the colleagues from Germany was excellent. The work required was not only implemented in full, it was also surpassed through additional measures carried out by the Ziemann engineers. We are more than satisfied with the result and with the quality and speed of the job«.