At BrauBeviale 2018, from November 13 to 15, at Hall 7, Booth 7-419, Siemens is demonstrating how the brewing industry can benefit from digitalization under the banner of “Digital Enterprise – Implement now!”
Thanks to different ingredients, temperatures, fermentation times and process steps, there is an enormous range of beers. This is equally true for multi-national businesses with many brands and small craft beer breweries with many recipes. They have one thing in common and that is to deliver the highest possible quality so that they can satisfy their customers – irrespective of how complex the brewing process may be.
By using a digital twin, all the processes in the recipe, right to the point of bottling, can be simulated in a completely digital environment, both realistically and down to the finest detail. This allows breweries to test and optimize their processes, whatever the complexity, until they can produce the actual beverage efficiently, flexibly and to an optimum quality.
The recipe for success is data
Siemens is showing how businesses in the brewing industry have achieved competitive benefits using the Digital Enterprise solutions package. The recipe for success is based on data: Starting with the recipe for the beverage, across the whole brewing process to the point of bottling, perfect virtual images of the relevant process step are produced by end-to-end digitalization.
The Siemens Simatic IT R&D suite allows breweries to produce a digital twin of their future product at the research and development phase. This contains all the relevant data and thus allows the subsequent processes to be simulated under highly realistic conditions in order to test the processes and to adhere to quality requirements. To this end, Siemens offers the PLM Plant Simulation software which allows production facilities to be tested without disrupting actual production. This generates optimized processes which produce greater flexibility – and thus increase competitiveness.
The whole life cycle is covered by the Siemens Braumat 7.5 process control system which is tailored to the brewing process. From its intuitive recipe system, through efficient process overview, to vat management and tailored reporting systems, the combination of Braumat and the Simatic S7-1500 Advanced Controller simplifies the process and guarantees beer of a constant quality. The Simatic PLC and Simatic WinCC visualization system provide transparency in the bottling process as well as efficient control of production.
This produces a digital twin of both the performance of the process and the product which allows continuous optimization – right back to research and development.
Data evaluation with MindSphere
Data is captured and evaluated using the cloud-based, open IoT operating system MindSphere and a special MindApp for intuitive analysis of the relevant metrics. Visitors to the fair can experience every step of this at the Siemens booth through interactive touch screens and models.