Support for helpful connectivity

The new fill­ing machines from SIG now come with indus­try-stan­dard OPC Uni­fied Archi­tec­ture con­nec­tiv­i­ty built in as part of its ongo­ing efforts to dri­ve greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in food and bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ing. This enables hor­i­zon­tal machine-to-machine and ver­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in the entire pro­duc­tion plant – from shop floor to top floor.The data exchange stan­dard helps for secure, reli­able and plat­form-inde­pen­dent indus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions, help­ing to dri­ve smart, con­nect­ed and ful­ly inte­grat­ed systems.
In addi­tion to this built-in offer­ing, all exist­ing fill­ing machines can also now be retro­fit­ted with a sim­ple plug-and-play instal­la­tion pro­vid­ing OPC-UA con­nec­tiv­i­ty. It is deliv­ered through the Con­nec­tor Mod­ule of SIG’s Plant 360 Con­troller solu­tion. This advanced mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol solu­tion was designed to opti­mise every part of food and bev­er­age pro­duc­tion by grad­u­al­ly inte­grat­ing all plant process­es and sys­tems into one plat­form, no mat­ter what equip­ment, sup­pli­er or PLC is used.

“SIG is com­mit­ted to dri­ving max­i­mum con­nec­tiv­i­ty and inte­gra­tion with­in our cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal fac­to­ries. And to enable this, all our new fill­ing machines, as well as auto­mat­ic mag­a­zines and down­stream solu­tions, are using indus­try-stan­dard OPC Uni­fied Archi­tec­ture, mean­ing that con­nec­tiv­i­ty is sim­ply built in from the start.”
— Ste­fan Mergel, Senior Prod­uct Man­ag­er Equipment

Hav­ing this con­nec­tiv­i­ty either built in or retro­fit­ted on the sys­tems gives food and bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers the great­est pos­si­ble free­dom and flex­i­bil­i­ty when choos­ing their oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing com­po­nents and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners. This ulti­mate­ly means that cus­tomer can con­fig­ure a dig­i­tal fac­to­ry based pre­cise­ly on their needs and demands.
For man­u­fac­tur­ers, flex­i­bil­i­ty in their oper­a­tions has become an increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal issue. With grow­ing indus­try demands, rapid­ly chang­ing con­sumer trends, and the ongo­ing chal­lenge of COVID-19, man­u­fac­tur­ers are seek­ing to make their pro­duc­tion lines more flex­i­ble, indi­vid­u­alised and agile to han­dle peri­ods of high­er out­puts and faster prod­uct changes, while also dri­ving down costs. As a result of this, many are look­ing to IoT-enabled sys­tems, data and automa­tion solu­tions to turn their fill­ing plants into intel­li­gent and con­nect­ed fac­to­ries. Mergel continues:

“Food and bev­er­age pro­duc­tion is rapid­ly chang­ing and becom­ing more demand­ing than ever. Fill­ing plants are oper­at­ing on an unprece­dent­ed lev­el with high­er demands, grow­ing com­pe­ti­tion, and ever-short­er pro­duc­tion cycles – even more so due to COVID-19. Now is the time for com­pa­nies to step up their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and ensure they can be more resilient, pro­duc­tive and agile in their future operations.”

Enabling this con­nec­tiv­i­ty with­in its fill­ing machines, sys­tems and com­po­nents is anoth­er aspect of the solu­tion-dri­ven Smart Fac­to­ry plat­form – a dri­ve to deliv­er IoT-enabled sys­tems and tech­ni­cal ser­vices that trans­form fill­ing plants into con­nect­ed fac­to­ries that secure the high­est pos­si­ble effi­cien­cy, flex­i­bil­i­ty and qual­i­ty for customers.