Currently, the ever-changing new technologies, rapidly changing consumer demands, intense market competition, and increasingly strict regulatory requirements are bringing new challenges to food and beverage enterprises. At the same time, the new quality productivity supported by digital technology and driven by innovation has become a strong engine for breakthroughs and transformations in food and beverage enterprises.
The combined effect of these factors profoundly affects various links in the industry value chain. Firstly, with the acceleration of product updates and consumers' increasing demand for food safety, enterprises need to innovate through digital technology to achieve production flexibility, transparency, and traceability; At the same time, facing fierce competition from close combat, food and beverage companies need to leverage innovative technologies to further promote refined management of production and supply chains, achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and explore potential benefits; Finally, enterprises also need to leverage digital technology to enhance their energy management capabilities and achieve sustainable development.
It is not difficult to see that innovative digital technology will become an important source of competitiveness and value enhancer in every link of the value chain of a food and beverage factory. How to use digital means to 'break through'? What enterprises need is not just the digital upgrade of software and hardware products and facilities, but a new "digital journey" covering consulting, planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance.
In this regard, as a pioneer in digital transformation, Schneider Electric has deeply integrated innovative digital products and solutions, as well as a complete set of professional capabilities from consulting to implementation, around the "problem eye" of digital transformation in the food and beverage industry. The aim is to tailor a practical roadmap and methodology for users and promote the industry to implement digital transformation as soon as possible.
Consulting, planning, and strategizing, following the footsteps of the "Lighthouse Factory" and embarking on a digital journey
As the saying goes, "Those who plan first will prosper later." The processing flow of food and beverage enterprises is complex, with relatively low net profits and low sensitivity to new technologies. Therefore, many enterprises lack comprehensive planning in digital transformation. To cope with such challenges, food and beverage companies can introduce digital transformation "models" that have been tested in practice as reference and guidance, and use "external brains" with professional consulting experience to assist themselves in overall planning and achieve targeted results.
In this regard, the "Lighthouse Factory" certified by the Davos World Economic Forum in collaboration with McKinsey is considered a typical "model" of advanced levels of digital transformation for enterprises. At present, Schneider Electric has 5 "lighthouse factories" and 2 "developing lighthouse factories" worldwide. With hands-on experience in manufacturing and a comprehensive understanding of the food and beverage industry, Schneider Electric is able to accurately identify pain points in supply chain management and factory production processes for food and beverage enterprises. Based on its own practical experience, Schneider Electric provides practical assistance for the successful transformation of the enterprise.
During the consulting phase, Schneider Electric innovatively launched top-level strategic plans such as lean production, supply chain collaboration, production optimization, and smart factory planning based on the digital transformation needs of food and beverage enterprises. They also formulated more in-depth and refined digital transformation strategies, determined digital goals and implementation plans, evaluated digital priorities and feasibility, and comprehensively empowered organizations to improve enterprise efficiency and achieve better digital transformation results.
For example, in response to the shortcomings of a large consumer goods enterprise in terms of industrial control level, business and data collaboration, production management flexibility and resilience, Schneider Electric has developed a digital intelligence strategy with industry lighthouse architecture as its core, helping it clarify its digital blueprint, achieve the integration of business, processes and data, and guide the construction and implementation of the enterprise's "lighthouse factory".
Building and operating tests' long-term capabilities', using digital tools to achieve long-term development
During the construction and operation phase, Schneider Electric provides innovative digital solutions covering three levels: production line level, factory level, and group level, to help food and beverage companies improve their production line digitalization level, ensure production safety and compliance, optimize production capacity, and reduce energy consumption.
At the production line level, Schneider Electric provides software covering EcoStruxure open automation platform, APC advanced process control, as well as terminal hardware equipment including PLC, frequency converter, intelligent instrument, etc., bringing a solution integrating "intelligent equipment+production control platform" to food and beverage factories, improving the level of production line process automation, production flexibility, and operational intelligence, releasing efficient productivity, and creating a reliable product quality control system.
Among them, Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure open automation platform is based on the IEC 61499 standard, which decouples software and hardware, breaks through existing system limitations, promotes "plug and play production" in the field of industrial automation, helps users improve engineering and operational efficiency, and supports flexible adjustment of production equipment to quickly respond to changes in supply and demand, promoting the gradual upgrading of enterprises throughout the entire lifecycle. Taking a domestic enterprise that focuses on cold chain logistics and warehousing as an example, the enterprise has utilized the EcoStruxure open automation platform to modularize and reuse objects such as conveyor lines, transfer machines, and stackers, reducing debugging time by 30%, error line products by 45%, and logistics throughput by 5.3%. The opening of the open platform has brought tangible productivity improvements to the enterprise.
On the basis of openness, using digital technology to optimize the process and create an intelligent process control system is an important support for food and beverage enterprises to carry out efficient production and ensure product quality and safety. In this regard, Schneider Electric's APC advanced process control system combines AI, predictive analysis and other technologies to analyze current working conditions and states based on historical data, deduce, predict, optimize, guide and control future trends and events, stabilize the production process of the device, and at the same time find the optimal control point within the controllable domain to reduce fluctuations in key process variables.
At the factory level, Schneider Electric can provide comprehensive solutions for factory construction and operation, including digital delivery platform construction, production, warehousing, equipment management, and energy management, as well as a big data management platform that integrates "data collection, storage, cleaning, and analysis" to help food and beverage enterprises build smart factories and achieve digital construction and intelligent operation.
With the deepening of digital transformation in the food and beverage industry, the model of enterprise projects from construction, delivery to operation and maintenance is also facing new changes - the digital chapter of "physical factories" and "virtual factories" is within reach, and data as a production factor is the golden key to opening this new chapter. During the project construction and delivery phase, Schneider Electric's asset information management system can help food and beverage companies build a centralized engineering project center. Based on data from multiple information sources and systems, it helps companies optimize project progress, operational performance, and safety, laying the foundation for building digital twin factories. In a well-known dairy modern health smart valley project, Schneider Electric utilized an asset information management platform to establish a progressive handover platform for customers during the project construction period. Through data uploading and sharing within the scope of permission and information exchange of all parties involved in the project, high-quality engineering data handover was achieved, creating an excellent digital delivery model for the domestic food and beverage industry.
In the production, operation, and maintenance phase, Schneider Electric's ProLeit process control solution focuses on addressing the challenges of process control in food and beverage enterprises. It integrates process control system PCS, manufacturing execution system MES, energy management system EMS, and packaging line management system LMS, which can significantly improve production process stability and operational flexibility, thereby enhancing productivity and efficiency. ProLeiT has comprehensive solutions and rich successful cases in various sub industries such as leisure food, dairy products, beverages, fine chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, which can accurately meet customers' needs and pain points.
The excellent operation of enterprises also relies on the intelligent operation and maintenance of equipment. In response to this demand, Schneider Electric EcoStruxure PMA Predictive Maintenance Consultant, as an intelligent equipment fault prediction and diagnosis solution based on big data and AI technology, driven by mathematical and mechanistic models, can help enterprises take timely action before faults occur and prevent them in advance. Empowered by the EcoStruxure PMA predictive maintenance consulting solution, a large dairy enterprise in Asia has achieved a 17% increase in equipment utilization, a 35% reduction in maintenance costs, an 80% reduction in unexpected downtime, and a 15% increase in production efficiency on key equipment such as homogenizers and centrifuges. This highlights the empowering value of new generation digital technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.
The collection, effective management, and analysis of data are crucial for the smooth construction and efficient operation of factories. Only by connecting the data collection of on-site production factors to the data flow and sharing on the factory operation side can food and beverage enterprises further process, analyze, and form insights that can guide their own production and operation, and maximize the value of data. In this regard, Schneider Electric, based on EcoStruxure IoT industrial Internet platform and AVEVA PI System big data management platform, helps enterprises build a data platform integrating data collection, storage, cleaning and analysis. Among them, industrial Internet is the basic path and methodology in the digital transformation of enterprises. As an open and elastic expansion supporting industrial Internet platform, Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IoT industrial Internet platform can flexibly adapt to a variety of business scenarios, provide food and beverage enterprises with rich data services, ensure end-to-end data security, and promote the real integration of IT and OT.
At the group level, efficient and lean decision-making is an important engine for food and beverage enterprises to enhance their core competitiveness and achieve "overtaking on curves". Schneider Electric AVEVA UOC Integrated Operations Center can assist customer enterprises in building an IT/OT integration platform. By integrating project stage information, performance information, and operational information, it vertically realizes visualization from production lines, workshops to factories, and groups, and horizontally connects the overall planning and operation of various links from production to packaging, and then to logistics. It helps enterprises achieve command and control from a single site to multiple sites, empowering decision-making.
The sweeping digital wave has brought not only urgent transformation challenges to many food and beverage enterprises, but also unlimited potential for long-term high-quality development of the entire industry. In the future, Schneider Electric will continue to integrate innovative digital technologies, industry knowledge and experience, and professional service capabilities to empower and escort the "digital journey" that runs through the entire life cycle of food and beverage enterprises, thereby contributing a continuous source of power to the high-quality and sustainable development of the entire industry.