A rapidly growing world population, progressive digitalisation and the trend of individualisation represent serious challenges that the food industry and their ingredient suppliers are facing. However, these challenges also provide big opportunities as Marco Schmidt, CTO of Doehler GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany, pointed out as part of a talk on the topic of “innovation” at drinktec.

Continuous improvement | While growth in craft breweries maintains to outpace that of the brewing industry, there is a increasing need to identify practical ways to help drive operational performance. Improved operational performance can include enhanced product quality, product safety, higher yields and lower costs, and increased capacity without the need for additional capital. These goals are very doable if one starts by focusing on the most important metrics first, and has an effective way to drive improvement on those metrics.

That backfired. At AB-InBev’s AGM on 26 April 2017, a representative from NN, a large Dutch insurer, complained to AB-InBev’s board that at AB-InBev “we see little diversity, insufficiently independent directors and especially a bonus culture for employees and managers that are not in line with international standards.”

Processes in the beverage industry place unique demands on conveyor systems and their drives, where all of the movement and the various speeds are determined by the filling process. As breweries update their equipment, many are turning to SEW-Eurodrive for energy-efficient mechatronic drives with a focus on hygienic design.

Industry 4.0 and the Smart Factory address major challenges – the securing of competitiveness, resources and energy efficiency, the quick change of sales markets and ever-stronger individualization. The introduction of cyber-physical systems as well as flexible and intelligent software solutions is necessary to create completely networked, self-organizing production systems and thus secure the sustainability of industrial manufacturing.

Paulaner is currently building a completely new, state-of-the-art brewery in Munich-Langwied. The existing equipment at the site in Munich-Au is slated to be sold. Since the brewery at the new location is gradually being commissioned, the equipment at the Munich-Au site is slowly being decommissioned, and for a time, production will occur at both locations. This presents quite a challenge, but it is one that can be overcome by creating a timetable and a sequential plan for optimizing the removal of the equipment.

In the brewing industry, the demand for consistent beer characteristics and taste all the time, despite variations in the quality of the raw materials, extends all the way through to the automation system: The new Version 7 of a renowned brewery process control system offers the same level of continuity, which fits seamlessly into the 35-year history of this system.

With almost 2800 craft breweries operating in 2013, up 15 percent over 2012, and perhaps 1700 more in various stages of planning, you’d have to be a real old miser to warn that this kind of growth cannot be sustainable. When Kim Jordan, the owner of New Belgium Brewery, predicted back in 2003 that craft beer will eventually garner 10 percent of the market – it had 3 percent then – Bob Weinberg, the eminent beer industry sage, retorted: “Not possible”. He obviously got it wrong.

The requirements set out by Carlsberg for migration to a new process control system were clear and deliverable. The brief for the new automation solution at the Danish brewery in Fredericia was quite simple: make the complex production processes more transparent and safer, considerably improve user-friendliness and, naturally, implement it as quickly as possible – with a minimum amount of production downtime.