Management and automated expertise in industrial production

Would you like to hear about a success story of a company that is living the digital transformation?

Here's one of our partner companies, a global tobacco company. With its innovative spirit, the company is already in Era 4.0, achieving results such as increased efficiency and quality.

The automation of their processes has meant generating integrated communication to reach quality and productivity targets

Challenge

Improve process control to increase product standardization, reduce raw material losses and energy consumption.

Context

This industry has implemented digital developments in its manufacturing processes.

Let's understand the context: In manufacturing, it is necessary to mix ingredients according to a specific recipe; products such as food, drinks and even chemicals are created this way.

This type of production has challenges such as variations at the start and end of each batch, process instabilities, among other factors that can affect the final quality of the product.

To manage this complexity, we have introduced “digital experts” at every stage of the process. These digital experts are known as cyber physical systems (CPS), which unite the digital world with the real world, autonomously collecting data for decision-making.

Let's think in terms of a restaurant, where each member of staff plays a crucial role. The automation for the company had CPS acting, for example, as a “drying specialist” optimizing the use of gas, like a cook adjusting the temperature of an oven. Meanwhile, the “control specialist” takes care of the product's humidity, like a cleaning assistant takes care of the environment. Each digital specialist ensures that their “sector” works harmoniously with the others, right?

With these innovations, our client has saved

This is an increase in quality and efficiency in real numbers.

And the positive impacts don't stop there:

Even if specialists achieve the best individual result, it is possible to improve the overall result by integrating these specialists. The maxim “together we are better” applies to digital too!

That's what we've done. We implemented a CPS that acts like a chef overseeing the quality of the final product. He ensures that each sector meets its targets and, what's more, this “central” CPS communicates promptly with the specialists, indicating adjustments needed to maintain specifications and minimize errors.

This process integration architecture has elevated our client to a Software Defined Facility company, because the entire factory is connected to intelligent systems that make autonomous decisions through cyber-physical systems, all with IEC 61499 technology.

Benefits

We deliver to our partner technologies that make decisions based on real-time data, targeting the interests of the business, acting full-time, uninterrupted and according to the needs of the process.