Topic > Nestlé application on industry-specific technologies

Nestlé has planned to optimize costs and labor inputs in line with the requirements of the Industry 4.0 concept at its plant in Osthofen, Germany. Implemented a pilot project based on the Orange Box solution provided by B&R. It meets the needs of transformation and helps old factories take a giant step forward on the road to smart factory efficiency. Within Nestlé, a new factory is created every year. One of these is the plant in Schwerin, Germany, where production began in 2014. Today's newly built factories are equipped with highly advanced technologies, but have not yet reached the level of standardization required by the Industry 4.0 concept, he notes Ralf Hagen, technical manager of Nestlé production systems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In addition to the new, efficient factories built every year, Nestlé also has 430 older factories that need to be modified. - These plants should also reach a competitive performance level, which means that they are optimized in line with the requirements of the Industry 4.0 concept. Some of the machines in these factories were put into operation 50 years ago. Back then, network infrastructure was something completely different compared to recent times and smart factories. In the new plant we have a single communication system that transmits data in real time to the enterprise resource planning system - explains Ralf Hagen. Describing the contemporary situation in current plants, in some cases they still manually collect data from the machines. Sometimes the data we need for tasks like monitoring the health of machines is already there, we just don't use it. Nestlé contacted several automation vendors to solve its problem, including B&R. Karl-Heinz Mayer, head of the B&R engineering office in Bad Homburg, Germany, found many options for leveraging intelligent automation to design conditions for the best use of existing resources. The best measure that can be used to reduce manufacturing costs is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Improving the OEE index could reduce production costs by 10-20%. Nestlé management saw the need for change. To improve OEE indicators it is necessary to significantly reduce the frequency of unplanned downtime. They use simultaneous access to digital production data from all their lines. This applies to both newer, fully integrated systems and older, less automated lines. It is also significant to have a direct and indirect correlation with the ERP enterprise resource planning system. Additionally, the solution must meet Nestlé safety standards. The company's management was looking for something that resembled the principle of using Apple's touch devices: seeing - touching - working and which at the same time could serve as a successful transitional solution for a short period of time (three to five years), until the ideal solution is cloud-based. Additional tasks arise from the fact that individual plants use different and dissimilar control systems from multiple manufacturers and also differ in the level of specialized knowledge about automation. After considering Nestlé's needs, B&R proposed an Orange Box solution, comprising equipment based on the Scalability+ principle and software based on mapp technology. Orange Box is the optimal combination of our equipment.