Food & Beverage

The existing ferment, in fact, towards the digital transformation of the processes and the personalization of the product pushes the numerous companies active in the sector to make constant investments in research and innovation of process and product, focusing on new plants and primary packaging, on a logistics of latest generation, quality control and a broader security concept.

The use of new technologies and the implementation of a process oriented towards the digitalisation of processes able to impact on the production of food products becomes a "must have" capable of translating into greater productivity, greater efficiency and superior results. However, in order to realize the full potential of technology, a new approach is required to overcome the challenges of Mass Customization through increases in production flexibility, improvements in energy efficiency and process, simplicity of programming and start-up, as well as greater safety and security. an increase in the speed of adaptation to customer needs or to market demands.

The integrated process and intelligent control solutions guide the Food & Beverage industry towards the maximum development of new technologies. Dynamism, precision and continuity are the needs of the food and consumer goods sector. The goal is to perform various functions in succession, such as filling, palletization or transport, with extreme efficiency and precision. The various movements require reliable and powerful drive systems to ensure the necessary delicacy and to use the appropriate force, when the objects to be prepared, handled and packaged are particularly fragile foods, which otherwise would be damaged and wasted along the production process.

Greater flexibility, efficiency, simplicity, safety and speed are the focus on which, in SEW-EURODRIVE, we aim to guarantee the food industries a reduction in the time-to-market and an increase in production agility to cope with the dynamism of the market and to increasingly binding production challenges.

The answer to a highly optimized production in the food & beverage industry is the introduction of new smart production concepts into the factory, like the adoption of connected and digitized solutions, as well as efficient, capable of guaranteeing the plants the flexibility they need to react to seasonal peaks or to make quick product changes.

The ongoing revolution in the food sector, concerning the new sensitivity towards non-polluting materials and the latest food trends (healthy, organic, etc.), underlines the importance of the right combination of technologies able to fully satisfy the particular production needs of market and guarantee high standards of performance.

The advantages deriving from an increasingly precise and flexible automation offer several improvements: greater product quality, optimization of pick and place times and processing of both primary and secondary packaging operations, as well as an increase in logistics performance, with a consequent reduction in management costs.

Intelligent automation allows us to respond in a more agile way to the dynamics of today's highly competitive market and to the ever-changing demands of the food production sector. In the Food sector, this translates into the use of smart automation technologies, able to ensure undoubted competitive advantages at the various levels of the production chain.

These include the connected, flexible and modular MOVI-C® platform, a complete solution for automation in four modules: design software, control technology, drive technology and drive technology. Designed to ensure versatility and adaptability in the automation of machines and systems for time and cost savings.

Stationary handling equipment in the food industry is essential to comply with increasingly stringent industry regulations. The food production industry requires cleanliness, productivity and reliability, as well as timely traceability, therefore safety must be strategically integrated to ensure consistency and regularity of food processes, as well as uniform results over time. Intelligent logistics management sets the stage for meeting customer needs and for delivering goods and products to the right destination at the right time efficiently and accurately.

Logistic movements must also guarantee the protection of products, as well as extremely precise storage. The optimization of production and factory layouts is certainly a fundamental aspect to make the production of a food industry more efficient through the correct management of the warehouse and intralogistics.

In fact, the growing demand for customization of products leads to the creation of increasingly variable pallets that also impact on the handling phases of food products. Precisely at this stage of the process, the use of AGV, Automated Guided Vehicle, is taking place in an increasingly more structured and structured way, so much so that the rethinking of logistics at the service of production is assumed.

The goal is to create versatile production processes, as required by a production context interested in obtaining maximum flexibility, simplicity and speed during the increasingly frequent product change phases.

Our MAS, Mobile Assistance System for Food are, in fact, able to bring innovation into increasingly complex production systems through the creation of new dynamic routes, without having to move goods and products on fixed and predefined routes.