Interlinked Bottling and Packaging Plants

Bottling and packaging of food and beverages is carried out with complex lines of interlinked machines. The filling process takes place at the central unit which is connected to the specific upstream and downstream machines by storage conveyors. From economical and ecological view and due to the special demands on quality in the food industry, a line operation without downtimes is necessary.

To increase the today’s low availability of 50 to 75%, main causes of downtimes have to be identified. Due to interactions of the interlinked machines, this is challenging. Therefore, models with regard to temporal interconnections inside the bottling and packaging plants are needed. The intention is to create a library of diagnosis models which enable to analyse operating data in combination with the respective installation structure. By this, the downtime causing aggregate and the causation inside of this aggregate are to be detected. The project results will be structured guidelines for operating data and approved modular customizable diagnosis models which enable system providers to link them linked in an automatically generated diagnosis system.

For bottling and packaging plants, model based diagnosis will be realized for the first time in this project. The scientific mission will be to consider the temporal interconnections, which have not been regarded so far. On the basis of the project results IT service providers together with the OEMs will be able to implement new diagnosis solutions. Herewith many small- and medium-sized companies of the food and beverage industry may improve their efficiencies in filling and packaging (potential at least 300 millions euro) as well as they may reduce their environmental impact.