Chocolate manufacturers and cocoa processors find themselves in a highly demanding and cost sensitive market environment. In addition, the current energy situation raises the need for efficient processes. But does a high efficiency go hand in hand with high quality standards? Bühler has the answer.
Bühler has always been meeting these market challenges with well-tried chocolate-making solutions and has created an all-round carefree service portfolio. High-class maintenance, revisions and customised retrofits have permitted that machines modernise together with your company. Meanwhile, digitalisation has become both, a new challenge for a traditional industry and an opportunity for creating true added value.
Therefore, Bühler has created an ecosystem of digital solutions and services which aims to empower the performance of your production plant. This digital journey is a long run on whose finish line awaits the smart chocolate plant… but step-by step.
A learning system
The R&D Team “Sense and Control” have been evaluating the best sensors on the market and implemented them into our solutions. With the process knowledge of Bühler in the back they initiated and perfectionated services like FineSensTM, Capacity Boost and Plasticity Control. FineSens for example, can be installed in your Five Roll Refiner and measures the fineness of particles on the fifth roll and can automatically correct the parameters on the machine control to reach the desired fineness. This way the output quality of your refiner can be adjusted to your needs immediately.
Within the scope of this capacity boost a camera system, installed in the refiner, will detect deviations in film coverage on the fifth roll. Also, with this feature process parameters of the refiner will be adjusted autonomously. The result is a constant quality and fineness and an optimal throughput for both small batch productions and continuous lines.
Plasticity Control is another new feature which, after the Prerefiner controls the plasticity of the product. This adds another puzzle piece to a consistent production.
The common purpose of these service products is to measure, collect data, adjust, and improve but foremost to leverage the efficiency of your processes.
Insights – the power of data
Data is complex and requires precise interpretation from experts. Bühler Insights is the tool that provides this connectivity. Data from the whole plant will be collected and provided to you in a form that is interpretable. Within this exchange you can track your processes and identify potential. As an additional feature your data can be shared with Bühler experts for remote analysis. Predictive maintenance is another project feature within Bühler Insights whose goal is to predict the wear of a roller based on the Insight data and notify the operator who can then order the roll exchange on myBühler. Use the learnings from Insights to avoid downtime, improve your efficiency and reduce waste and emissions.
When things come together
The last steps to the finish line still must be taken and they are big steps. But when things are coming together, and process knowledge combined with machines that autonomously improve their operation, it is as if your best operator would work on every station and this around the clock.
To come back to the initial question. Efficiency and quality are not opposite poles. The sensors and control have a direct impact on the consistency of product put through the processes, permit an uninterrupted production and therefore, improve both, efficiency, and quality of the product.
Editorial Contact:
Editor: Kiran Grewal kgrewal@kennedys.co.uk
