Challenges of the Beer and Beverage Industry
Beer and beverages have a long history and are closely related to our lives, making it a highly competitive market. For manufacturers, intense competition leads to extremely low prices and thin profit margins. Furthermore, due to massive production capacity, manufacturers must meticulously manage every aspect, including materials, time, labor, and machine utilization, or they will suffer losses. This is a market with extremely high requirements for automation. In the entire field of machinery and equipment, beer and beverages best test the capabilities of automation systems.
Figure 1 - Plant OEE, TCO, and Predictive Maintenance Requirements
OEE is a guarantee of profitability.
This is a key indicator. In layman's terms, OEE can be understood as the indicator of how profitable a production line can be for a company. Figure 2 shows the composition of OEE. Each factor that causes OEE will lead to an increase in costs, which in turn corresponds to profitability.
Figure 2 - OEE is a key indicator for evaluating production line operations.
👉The production line must operate in a steady state and be able to reduce uptime waste;
👉Reduce production waiting time and reduce performance waste caused by slowing down;
👉Usability waste due to equipment failure, process setup, and changeover;
TCO—Total Cost of Ownership
Investments in industries like beer and beverages are inherently long-term projects; therefore, the total cost of ownership for production line equipment is of paramount importance.
👉Material consumption: The huge production capacity means that every 1g of material wasted will accumulate into huge costs, and high-precision control is required for things like the wall thickness of bottles;
👉Energy consumption: The consumption of electricity, steam, compressed gas, etc., per bottle of water;
👉Labor costs: High automation reduces labor costs on the production line;
👉Learning cost: Simple operation reduces the learning cost for operators;
👉Maintenance costs: Mechanical wear and electrical failures not only increase maintenance costs, but also increase the costs associated with defective products.
👉Residual value of equipment: Does the equipment still retain its value after 10 years of operation?
Procurement cost is not the only consideration; for long-term investments, total cost of ownership (TCO) is a more meaningful evaluation metric.
Comprehensive predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance is crucial for predicting the health status of key components such as bearings, gears, and electrical drives. This impacts the production line in several ways:
👉Extend maintenance intervals: Allowing equipment to maintain longer maintenance intervals and ensuring long-term stable production is the foundation of profitability;
👉Lifespan: From the perspective of fixed asset amortization, if the lifespan exceeds expectations, it means a return on pure investment.
👉Reduce waste from unplanned downtime
Beer and beverage machines have distinct characteristics:
▪ Extremely high speed, with filling speeds reaching 108,000 bottles per hour or even higher;
▪ Response speed: A blow molding or filling process is completed in the 100ms range;
▪ The equipment is compact, with dozens of workstations for blow molding, filling, and capping installed in a single production unit;
▪ Blow-fill-spin-in-line production requires high OEE (Original Equipment Quality).
▪ Fewer wiring connections, fewer slip ring connections required;
▪ Power failure shutdown function;
Flexibility and intelligence are essential
For many industries, equipment integration and data analysis are just beginning to become popular, but for beer and beverages, they are already mature technologies. The integration of MES/ERP, process, batch control and discrete packaging in production is just beginning for other industries, while for beer and beverage packaging, more flexible and intelligent production has become a necessity.
B&R - Beer and Beverage Packaging Experts
The most demanding users hone their exceptional problem-solving skills.
In the beer and beverage industry, becoming a widely recognized solution provider requires long-term dedication to the industry. Top-tier users typically possess a deep understanding of the industry and often raise the most demanding requirements to maintain their leading position. For partners like B&R, this means designing the necessary hardware and software products on demand, flexible system architecture design, engineering testing and verification, and cultivating industry experts. Decades of experience have built B&R's profound expertise and earned the trust of its customers in the global beer and beverage equipment sector.
Hardware and software products—meeting specific industry needs
A control panel that integrates control, display, and operation.
Figure 3 - Integrated panel meeting the requirements of the beer and beverage industry
Figure 3 shows an integrated panel that meets industry requirements and has the following features:
▪ High-performance processing—integration of real-time tasks and Windows tasks
▪ Single cable – integrates signal, control, and communication;
▪IP69K protection rating—protects against water washing;
Stainless steel design—meets sanitary requirements;
▪ Rocker arm installation—from top to bottom or from bottom to top;
▪ Multi-touch design to prevent accidental operation;
In the overall design of the machine, this panel can be used as the operating unit of the whole machine, or it can be connected to an industrial PC through a unified cable, and then multiple panels can be operated, a control unit can be established, or multiple combinations of controls can be used.
Figure 4 shows B&R's ACOPOSmotor, which integrates servo drive and motor into one unit. It is widely used in bottle blowing, capping, and labeling units for beer and beverages because it meets the special requirements of these environments.
Figure 4 - B&R ACOPOSmotor and ACOPOSremote high-protection-level servo systems
ACOPOSmotor integrated motor drive design
▪ Compact installation;
▪ Single-cable technology—simple wiring;
▪ mappMotion—Easy to program;
▪ Built-in color mark function—labeling application;
▪POWERLINK—High-speed response;
▪ IP65 high protection rating - can withstand washing;
▪ High-order motion control curves—low mechanical impact and long service life;
ACOPOSremote is also a high-protection inverter, and like ACOPOSmotor, it is deployed in a distributed manner and can connect to various motors or linear motors.
Bottle blowing unit
The preforms, pre-made by the preform injection molding machine, pass through the preform handling unit, are conveyed, heated, and then to the preform removal wheel. They enter the blow molding mold, pass through the stretching rod, and undergo pre-blowing, low-pressure blowing, high-pressure blowing, cooling and degassing processes to quickly complete the blowing of a bottle. The stretching rod is then lifted, the mold is opened, and a bottle is produced. This complex process needs to be completed in just over 100 milliseconds.
Figure 5 - Blow Molding Unit Flowchart
Servo stretching controlled by B&R's ACOPOSmotor provides high-speed motion control for blow molding, offering both precision and speed. For even higher speeds, such as blow molding exceeding 72,000 bottles per hour, considering the mechanical wear of the lead screw, a linear motor is used. As shown in Figure 6, the servo stretching action is achieved by ACOPOSremote controlling a third-party motor.
Figure 6 - ACOPOSremote-based linear motor control for bottle blowing servo stretching
Filling control unit solution
In the filling of beer and beverage products, the viscosity, density, gas content, and volume of various liquids will affect the control process required for filling, including valve operation and filling curve. Each filling head corresponds to the opening and closing of multiple filling valves, including a series of actions as shown in Figure 7, such as purging, isobaric, filling (rough filling and fine filling processes), and gas return and pressure relief. These processes also need to be completed within tens of milliseconds.
Figure 7 - Simplified flowchart of the filling unit
In the filling unit, B&R's valve island controllers and reACTION technology provide strong support for these high-speed tasks.
Figure 8 - B&R's technology for filling control
Valve island controller
Valve island control is specifically designed for controlling blow molding and filling valves. It can be connected via a bus and directly implements the simplest system architecture through a simple design, saving wiring and making programming more convenient. It is also a major advantage for B&R in the beer and beverage filling field. As shown in Figure 8, using a valve island controller can save a lot of wiring, and it can be connected to third-party valve islands using buses such as CANopen, POWERLINK, and PROFINET.
Servo capping unit
Figure 9 - Screw Cap Unit
Aside from pressure capping for beer and soft drinks, most products use screw caps. ACOPOSmotor provides screw caps for each bottle. The key point here is the balance between "precision and speed." Every product in the B&R ACOPOS family has powerful control capabilities, quickly switching between speed and torque rings, ensuring precise force control while capping at high speed.
Figure 10 - Motion control module based on PLC Open standard package
MappMotion has a dedicated feature for switching between speed and torque loops, making it both fast and accurate.
Labeling unit
Each type of wine or beverage requires labeling, and in order to match the high-speed production line, a large number of disc labelers apply different labels at high speed. Beer will have multiple labeling stations to provide labels, all of which require precise and high-speed control.
Figure 11 - Servo Rotary Unit of Labeling Machine
The multi-axis synchronization system using ACOPOSmotor, as shown in Figure 12, can provide rotation for each bottle to improve overall labeling efficiency.
Figure 12 - Labeling unit control system using ACOPOSmotor
heat film packaging unit
After the initial processing, economy-class beverages are packaged in film for easy carrying, or in paper packaging. Premium beers or drinks are generally packaged in cardboard boxes. These are the common packaging methods for beverages that you see in supermarkets.
B&R's mold package control solutions have been in China for 20 years and have basically become the standard in the field. In the early days, they were based on the ACOPOS servo drive system, and later upgraded to ACOPOSmulti, or the more integrated ACOPOSP3. The number of servo axes usually ranges from 4 to 15.
Figure 13 - Basic principle diagram of heat film packaging
OMAC/PackML
OMAC/PackML provides a unified UI design, programming standard, and communication protocol for machines from different manufacturers, enabling devices that follow the specification to achieve plant-wide data collaboration and unified connectivity between the MES system and machines, as well as quality data and OEE statistics.
Figure 14 - Integration of the entire line via PackML
PackML
Figure 15 - PackML's Unified UI Design
B&R supports OMAC/PackML in its OPCUA industry specification, and PackML programming and web-based configuration are also supported in mapp software. PackML is also supported in the APROL platform so that plant data can be aggregated in the same specification.
Summarize
A table summarizing the matching degree of B&R's beer and beverage industry solutions.
From this table, we can match the needs of end-product manufacturers and the needs of machines with B&R's solutions. From any perspective, B&R understands and provides the necessary software and hardware product technologies.
Of course, the solution wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of B&R's electromechanical engineers who have deep expertise in the industry, because only hardware, software, and experts can constitute the entire solution.
