PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2020

DIGITALISATION PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 04/20 www.petpla.net 10 Today, increasingly informative production data are being acquired and evaluated digitally. Companies are learning to get to know their pro- duction processes to an extent that at the time of the fi rst computers was dif- fi cult to imagine. In beverage produc- tion operations, too, huge progress is being made, and Krones has long since been working on cross-man- ufacturer, cross-machine solutions. With its Syskron subsidiary, the com- pany has a start-up within the group that is in operational terms largely detached from the conventional pro- cesses, and embraces new concep- tual approaches, creates solutions, but wherever necessary can tap into the experience of Krones itself. Getting existing machines fi t for digitalisation When it comes to digitalisation in the beverage industry, the devel- opment people at Syskron were in agreement that digitalisation must not exclude existing machines. For this reason, the Edge component Ready- Kit was developed as one of the fi rst products. ReadyKit as a managed computer enables the IT of the fi lling lines to be linked throughout for the purpose of acquiring the production data. It is particularly important in this context to ensure that both new and exist- ing machines, plus equipment from Digitalisation and the beverage production industry A modularised look at the future It was nearly 80 years ago that Konrad Zuse developed the fi rst universally programmable computer, and it’s almost 50 years ago now that the fi rst personal computer appeared on the market. As the performative capabilities of the devices have increased, their fi elds of application have also changed and expanded. Without the complex information processing provided by these electronic brains, our present-day lives would no longer be conceivable. These developments were the most important foundation for kick- starting a fourth industrial revolution, namely digitalisation. In this article, Krones examines the possibilities for the beverage production industry. third-party manufacturers, and even machines lacking a communication interface can be linked up. And since not all machines provide the same database, ReadyKit enables highly disparate data records to be read out and used to calculate ratios, for exam- ple, so as to create the foundation for further evaluations. This information is collected and saved in the Cloud, and can then be displayed, evaluated and utilised by the individual applications in the IIoT platform Share2Act from Syskron. Share2Act platform By developing Share2Act, the Krones subsidiary has created a multi- client-capability platform in which not only can every machine, even from different manufacturers, in future be linked and imaged in the produc- tion operation, but which at the same time provides functionalities that were offered in classical MES suites. Whereas in the past a vendor’s com- petence was determined by his ability to offer interfaces between individual systems such as line planning, pro- duction and quality management, and thus to offer harmonised solutions, it has now become possible, with tech- nologies like Edge Devices, the Cloud and IIoT platforms, to provide a single product that in its core covers all supra-ordinate functions like access and user management while at the same time imaging extensive func- tionalities in the shape of individual modules, referred to as services. The advantage lies in a faster develop- ment process, which means users of such platforms can regularly, and at comparatively short intervals, receive new standardised functions and solu- tions.