Germany is a beer nation. This is demonstrated on the one hand by the per capita consumption of around 100 liters per year, and on the other by the Purity Law, which dates back to 1516 and still applies today. At the same time, cherished traditions and technical change go hand in hand, as digitalization has long since found its way into beverage production and bottling in particular. For example, the long-established company Krombacher has brought the monitoring of its twelve bottling lines up to date with the help of industrial service provider Actemium. The system gives the beverage producer full transparency of its filling lines, the associated machines and energy management, among other things. The results are increased planning and process reliability as well as an improved cost and energy balance.

The Krombacher brewery produces more than 5.7 million hectoliters at the site of the same name in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia - from different types of beer to non-alcoholic soft drinks. The company turned to Actemium with the requirement to be able to obtain further data from the monitoring of the bottling lines and thus more comprehensive production reports, more precise annual analyses and thus also a better energy and environmental balance. In order to successfully introduce the new monitoring system, the industrial service provider had to integrate 250 control systems (PLCs) from eleven existing bottling lines, another new bottling line set up by Krombacher and connected auxiliary systems.

From inspection to planning

Before a tailor-made solution could be developed for the new system landscape, Actemium and Krombacher first held joint workshops to clarify the exact requirements and then inspect the existing architecture. For example, the old system used various software solutions to record operating data from the field level and quality data and store it in an SQL database. The latter was recorded manually and entered into Excel for local reporting. There was also software for displaying trend reversals and another for visualization as a graphical interface. The reported key figures were then sent to the data warehouse and the SAP system.

In addition to the various software solutions running alongside each other, the difficulty lay in the manual recording of quality data, which led to a higher susceptibility to errors. At the same time, SAP postings via SQL place high demands on the system to reliably deliver the correct figures. In the case of Krombacher, the old system was also discontinued and had to be replaced. Added to this is the possibility of real-time analysis of consumption quantities directly in the SCADA, which is very helpful in the search for optimization potential and quick troubleshooting. The old system therefore offered potential for a new system to increase efficiency through valid fault data and reduce resource requirements at various points.

The new system landscape therefore had to be able to record and visualize the entire production process - from beverage production and filling to energy management. To achieve this, different systems as well as the entire bottling lines had to be integrated and a comprehensive reporting system had to be possible. On the one hand, the challenge was to integrate the existing 250 or so PLC control systems at the start of the project in order to record and process 120,000 messages, 40,000 measured values and 20,000 counters. On the other hand, it had to be scalable, i.e. be able to exploit the potential for expansion and other parts of production such as logistics, production and supply and disposal facilities.

The solution approach

Author Dennis Trosdorff with a view of one of the numerous displays that employees can use to view system details at any time.

© Actemium

When selecting the system and layout, Krombacher, together with Actemium, opted for the zenon software platform from Copa-Data. The advantages include the extensive PLC driver library supplied and the suitability for visualization and control of equipment and processes as well as for data acquisition and evaluation.

In a second step, all existing and new variables were viewed and recorded in order to obtain a complete overview using a variable list. This included the SQL data packages from the old system, meter data as XML and new data from other systems. Actemium developed a program that used the data previously compiled in Excel to automatically generate the SCADA projects, including all data on projects, PLC drivers, data points, plant models and archives, as well as the interaction with external systems.

This reduced the workload and significantly reduced transmission errors. At the same time, all changes can be made by revising the Excel lists, making it easier to document changes. A newly installed Krombacher bottling line served as a template to demonstrate the potential of the new system landscape to the customer.

Two redundant servers connect the new and scalable IT architecture via various interfaces with classic and web clients, the project planning environment, database servers, the data warehouse and ERP systems. This also enables detailed and centralized reporting.