Innovations in automation, integration and traceability delivering efficiency, quality and confidence
By: Mikael Samuelsson, Director Automation Solutions, Tetra Pak
Today’s food and beverage producers deliver to exacting requirements — providing products of the highest quality that inspire unshakable confidence while constantly improving production efficiency and profitability. Ensuring this across complex and interdependent processing and packaging systems is a delicate balance. Thanks to Tetra Pak’ innovations in automation, integration and traceability solutions, today’s producers can achieve maximum efficiency and quality to strike this balance.
Evolving automation
For a number of years, automation has played an important role in helping to achieve greater production efficiency, controlling equipment and the movement of products through the factory. As market demands and technology progress, however, traditional automation alone will not rise to all the challenges of a changing industry. Today and in the future, success will depend on the innovative application of automation solutions.
Automation has come a long way in a relatively short period of time, moving on from the simple linking of individual pieces of equipment. The Tetra Pak iLine™ aseptic carton packaging solution is a perfect example of how Tetra Pak is pushing the boundaries of automation. Employing the latest technologies, the latest solutions increase equipment reliability and capacity to reduce operational costs.
At the heart of the Tetra Pak iLine is a new automation platform that allows each component in the line to talk to all the others via Ethernet Protocol addresses and Ethernet connectivity. The system enables industry-first centralised production line management. This can help producers to reduce production costs by up to 40 per cent, bringing substantial advantages in a competitive marketplace.
Integration, information and traceability
As the Tetra Pak iLine demonstrates, the vastly enhanced control and data acquisition capabilities of the latest generation of automation systems offer benefits that go far beyond production efficiency.
For Tetra Pak’s customers, uniformity of ingredients, taste and quality is paramount. In globalised and increasingly standardised markets, retailers and consumers expect consistency in every single product. Growing consumer awareness of food safety is also driving demand for more information on the beverages they buy. This, in turn, is leading to increasingly stringent food safety laws, with compliance often dependent on the provision of regular and detailed production data.
In terms of integrated automation, Tetra Pak set the pace over a decade ago with the introduction of its Tetra PlantMaster™ solution. It’s a constantly evolving suite of automation
solutions that today not only brings ongoing efficiency, but, in enhancing traceability, also the means to guarantee quality and inspire and maintain confidence. The latest generation of Tetra PlantMaster unite the packaging line monitoring system, PLMS Centre, and line controller system, LC 30, to integrate both processing and packaging activities and deliver factory-wide control.
Traditionally, traceability has only allowed the tracking of ingredients. If producers wanted to review quality or processing data, they needed to access it from separate databases, which obviously delays the process. With Tetra PlantMaster, however, the control system collects all the information together in real time. Operators and quality control personnel can now see who, when and how a particular pack was processed in less than a minute.
This collection and visualisation of unprecedented amounts of information allows producers to plan production, monitor efficiency and trace the lineage of all raw materials. At any stage in the process, reports can be generated giving up-to-date information on any aspect of the process, including how many packages are being produced, how many litres are being processed, production performance, machine efficiency and even cleaning-in-place.
Production best practices can now be replicated each and every time to ensure consistency that meets retailer and consumer demands. With real time monitoring and complete automation control, producers can accurately diagnose and solve potential production problems, often before they happen. Ongoing data analysis, visualised in ways that are familiar to staff, can be used to constantly improve efficiency.
Traceability in action
With access to this level of structured data and the ability to control every aspect of the processing and packaging process, Tetra PlantMaster allows our customers to take traceability to new levels. One example can be found in Brazil, where Aurora Coopercentral, one of the country
The solution, which Aurora calls Aurora Traced Product, brings the company, its retailers and consumers more insight than ever before, with information related to each individual milk package, not just an entire lot. With an integrated internet-based communication platform, consumers of Aurora can access specific information on their foods by entering a unique code printed on each carton via the company
Mario Lanznaster, President of Aurora Coopercentral has spoken about the benefits Tetra PlantMaster and next generation traceability bring to the company: "Traceability is an essential tool to demonstrate credibility and engender confidence with producers, customers, suppliers and consumers. It has now become a critical food safety indicator. Working with Tetra Pak, Aurora and its customers can track foods from raw materials through to the final manufactured product. We can now monitor the production process and control quality parameters in real time.
In Russia, Galaktika Group, one of the country, has similarly strict requirements for raw materials, business processes and quality control. Its well-known brands are sold by more than 8,000 retail and wholesale companies, and are trusted by retailers and consumers across the country and in a number of the Commonwealth of Independent States countries.
Galaktika was among the first producers in Russia to integrate the Tetra PlantMaster solution, installing it at their new Gatchina plant in 2008. The factoryof raw milk a day and efficiency, quality and consistency are of paramount importance. Tetra PlantMaster has enabled the company to fully automate their production facility, allowing for lower workforce levels, reduced risk of human error, higher levels of hygiene and improved food safety.
Control for costs, consistency and confidence
Tetra Pak is using innovation to bring new technologies that meet the challenges of a rapidly changing dairy industry. Intelligent automation, integration and data utilisation combined to deliver traceability capabilities that offer ongoing efficiencies, uncompromising quality and demonstrable food safety. The continuing evolution of systems such as Tetra PlantMaster means that producers are in control and ideally placed to meet the needs of today
Read more about automation solutions and Tetra PlantMaster
For more information please contact Mikael Samuelsson, Director Automation Solutions, Tetra Pak