“Digitize your Food”

The C‑level event “Dig­i­tize your Food” took place in Wolfertschwen­den at the begin­ning of Octo­ber, joint­ly orga­nized by the Open Indus­try 4.0 Alliance, a cross-indus­try net­work of com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal­iza­tion envi­ron­ment, and MULTIVAC. Around 100 deci­sion-mak­ers had come togeth­er at MUL­TI­VAC’s train­ing and appli­ca­tion cen­ter. The wel­come address and a keynote speech by the Open Indus­try 4.0 Alliance were fol­lowed by spe­cial­ist pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sion ses­sions on dig­i­ti­za­tion in the food indus­try, as well as the pre­sen­ta­tion of a showcase.

“Indus­try 4.0 solu­tions turn out to be very com­plex, espe­cial­ly in a het­ero­ge­neous machine envi­ron­ment. As a found­ing mem­ber of the Open Indus­try 4.0 Alliance, we want to open up an inter­op­er­a­ble ecosys­tem for our cus­tomers. Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with­in, but also out­side of our pack­ag­ing solu­tions is our vision — always with the cus­tomer ben­e­fit in focus.”

- Dr. Mar­ius Grath­wohl, Vice Pres­i­dent Dig­i­tal Prod­ucts & Transformation

Digitization from the perspective of a machine builder and a customer from the food industry

The keynotes by Dr. Mar­ius Grath­wohl and Dr. Benedikt Hof­mann, CTO Voith Inno­va­tion & Tech­nol­o­gy, CEO Voith Robot­ics, on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, data-based process opti­miza­tion and added val­ue through dig­i­tal prod­ucts pro­vid­ed new ways of think­ing and up-to-date infor­ma­tion on the top­ic of indus­tri­al digitalization.

Leon Jerg, Busi­ness Ana­lyt­ics & Dig­i­tal­iza­tion at JERMI Käsew­erk GmbH, then spoke about the use of Smart Ser­vices as a busi­ness ana­lyt­ics tool in intel­li­gent­ly net­worked pro­duc­tion and showed how it can be used to tap opti­miza­tion poten­tial in ongo­ing operations.

Showcase: one line, three different machine builders, one dashboard

Dur­ing a show­case, the par­tic­i­pants were able to see for them­selves how dif­fer­ent machine builders act togeth­er in an open ecosys­tem and gen­er­ate added val­ue for cus­tomers. A line for pack­ag­ing minced meat was shown, which includ­ed solu­tions from three machine builders: a VF 848 S vac­u­um filler from Handt­mann, a TX 720 tray­seal­er, and a CWF­maxx 3000 check­weigher from Bizer­ba. All rel­e­vant process para­me­ters of the line were dis­played live on a com­mon mon­i­tor­ing dash­board. The line was con­trolled via Line Con­trol, a high­er-lev­el line con­trol system.