The südback exhibition in Stuttgart from 23 to 26 September is one of the most important trend trade fairs for the bakery and confectionery industry in Germany. A key focal point to this year’s event is the question of how companies can cope with the increasing level of competition within the baking industry.
Due to this competitive pressure, all production processes need to offer the highest level of flexibility – from dough production through the baking process to packaging of the finished product. For instance, this means that – based on the dough – several versions of one product can be produced. This is possible thanks to a single IT system which controls and monitors all subordinate semi or fully automated process areas and is connected to ERP systems via integrated interfaces.
In Hall 1 / Stand 1J80, ProLeiT will present its modular IT system Plant iT with integrated MES functionalities for all process areas in the baking industry. This industry-specific feature combined with cutting-edge information technology enables data transparency from the operational to the planning level and at all stages of value creation.
To coincide with the südback exhibition, ProLeiT presents the version upgrade 9.5 of Plant iT: New operating dialogues, developed on the basis of extensive usability tests, ensure greater operating flexibility while supporting more efficient and effective plant management. The innovative system extensions LMS, Batch Cockpit and MWS offer further industry-specific added value benefits:
Line Management for baking lines: minimising downtime, maximising plant efficiency
Downtime means losses. Since even the shortest amount of downtime, so-called micro-stops, can reduce a system's effectiveness significantly. Within this context, a Line Management System (LMS) provides a great solution and helps to determine the causes of downtime. Thanks to LMS, which is available as both an add-on for the production data management system Plant Acquis iT and for brewmaxx - the industry solutions for breweries - ProLeiT enables simple access to the world of Line Management.
The add-on records the automated downtime of plants and machines. The causes of downtime and other system or order-related data can be entered at any time manually via drop-down boxes. The entire data can be analysed down to the finest detail with the help of the drill-down-function: downtime periods can then be arranged hierarchically with varying levels of detail from the overall bottling plant to individual units.
Batch Cockpit: perfect entry point to integrated batch analysis
Modern industrial bakeries realise: high data availability during production gives a real competitive advantage over every rival. Effective and efficient processes can only be achieved when you are well informed of the current plant status regarding capacities, materials and costs - at all times. The ability to know which batch is produced when, how and where and at which level of quality is thus elementary. The large volumes of data generated during production proceedings often place an excessive burden on operators – correlations remain undetected and potentials unused.
The add-on Batch Cockpit from ProLeiT is a clever software solution for evaluating, processing and validating production data. Thanks to seamless integration in other functions of the MES solutions Plant Integrate iT and brewmaxx Integrate, all the data can be further processed and prepared productively.
MWS: The weighing assistant for manual weighing processes
Adding materials manually is a task that is regularly needed in the process industry. These may be anything from small quantities for laboratories to quantities recorded using only platform scales. Potential sources of error at this stage are basically due to the fact that weighing orders are written down by hand and safety regulations are not met. Inefficient weighing processes and off-specification batches caused by erroneous additions additionally lead to reduced quality and a notable loss of time and raw materials.
ProLeiT's new Manual Weighing System (MWS), an add-on for the modular process control system Plant iT, delivers an intelligent weighing assistant that enables the clear processing of bills of material while visually and reliably guiding operators through the weighing process aided by five colour grades. In order to offer the best possible support for processes at the operating station, the application contains workflow data, including, e.g., information about required protective clothing or how to handle certain materials.
Furthermore, the MWS helps operators select the most suitable scales depending on the stipulated weighing and tolerance range.