New version of Braumat process control system

Siemens has showed a new ver­sion of the Brau­mat brew­ery process con­trol sys­tem at the Brau Beviale 2019 in Nurem­berg: The lat­est ver­sion 8.0 is based on the Simat­ic S7-1500 con­troller and has been opti­mized in the areas of report­ing, weigh­ing sys­tems and secu­ri­ty. Already installed Simat­ic S7-400 con­trollers can still be used, includ­ing in mixed oper­a­tion. Exist­ing Brau­mat instal­la­tions can be expand­ed or mod­ern­ized with Simat­ic S7-1500 con­troller. Pro­duc­tion down­times caused by new instal­la­tions are thus avoided.

In order to enhance the report­ing options, a batch report with a basic choice of process para­me­ters has been inte­grat­ed. Users can now cre­ate reports with the help of MS Excel. Brau­mat V8.0 is also now con­nect­ed to the estab­lished PM-Qual­i­ty option. This means that MES (Man­u­fac­tur­ing Exe­cu­tion Sys­tem) and MIS (Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem) func­tions are now avail­able for cal­cu­lat­ing KPIs (Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors) such as plant avail­abil­i­ty. In the new ver­sion, stor­age loca­tion man­age­ment is inte­grat­ed togeth­er with dosage man­age­ment in the recipe sys­tem, enabling the effi­cient and flex­i­ble automa­tion of mix­ing process­es. Recipes are auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust­ed accord­ing to stor­age loca­tion avail­abil­i­ty and the quan­ti­ty spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the batch­es to be pro­duced. High-pre­ci­sion, self-opti­miz­ing weigh­ing oper­a­tions are ful­ly auto­mat­ed with the inte­grat­ed Siwarex weigh­ing sys­tem. The Brau­mat V8.0 process con­trol sys­tem con­tin­u­ous­ly checks recipes and quan­ti­ties for the indi­vid­ual pro­duc­tion process­es, thus reduc­ing over­dos­es of malt, hops and diatoma­ceous earth. A com­bi­na­tion of pass­word pro­tect­ed Simat­ic S7-1500 con­trollers, encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the ter­mi­nal bus as well as extend­ed user man­age­ment and com­pa­ny ID reg­is­tra­tion via an RFID card read­er increas­es secu­ri­ty dur­ing the pro­duc­tion sequences.

New Brau­mat V8.0 is avail­able in both a stan­dard and lean edi­tion: With Brau­mat Lean, micro brew­eries and craft brew­ers can ben­e­fit from process automa­tion from just a quan­ti­ty of four units and one Simat­ic Open Con­troller. This can be expand­ed up to 40 units as required. Brau­mat Lean can also be oper­at­ed as a com­pact, sin­gle user sta­tion or for remote areas of large brew­eries, such as lab­o­ra­to­ries. With the Stan­dard edi­tion, it is pos­si­ble to cre­ate com­plex plant struc­tures with redun­dant client-serv­er fea­tures and serv­er visu­al­iza­tion. The Lean Edi­tion of Brau­mat V8.0 can be expand­ed to the Stan­dard Edi­tion. After just a few days of train­ing, users are able to con­fig­ure new Brau­mat plants. For oth­er food and bev­er­age sec­tors such as dairies, cheese fac­to­ries or soft drinks, the Sis­tar ver­sion 8.0 process con­trol sys­tem is available.

As a long-term part­ner in the inter­na­tion­al brew­ing and bev­er­ages indus­tries, Siemens is demon­strat­ing at this year’s BrauBe­viale being held in Nurem­berg from Novem­ber 12 through 14 how its inno­v­a­tive brew­ery automa­tion process­es enable the first step into dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Vis­i­tors to booth 419 in hall 7 can expe­ri­ence the path to dig­i­tal­iza­tion them­selves: Exhibits stretch from the lean ver­sion of the Brau­mat process con­trol sys­tem for the automa­tion of micro brew­eries, to a stan­dard Brau­mat sys­tem with a Man­u­fac­tur­ing Oper­a­tion Man­age­ment (MOM) solu­tion and ener­gy man­age­ment, to cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies such as cloud and edge computing.