How to build smart machines?

Connected businesses to life. That's the goal Rockwell Automation pursues to support its customers in their digital transformation. For the automation and digitalization specialist, that starts with smart machines. After all, to reliably connect OT and IT requires data. Lots of data. Rockwell helps food companies draw out the digitization roadmap of what all they can do with that data. As a local partner, Routeco is responsible for the full guidance of that journey.

Industry 4.0 is all about the integration of control and information technology. Communication is therefore crucial. "A trump card for Rockwell Automation," opens Patrick Blommaert. "We have always been strong in networking, because we saw very early on the usefulness of a general standard for communication in an industrial environment. By betting on connectivity over Ethernet, we can help food companies build that bridge between OT and IT." While the questions of food companies in automation projects are still the same-how can I make the products my customer asks for as good and as efficient as possible-the answers have invariably become (partly) digital. "So those who digitize can put those gains in efficiency, flexibility and food safety that are what it's all about today," Blommaert summarizes.

Smart machines are flexible machines

But how do you begin such a digital transformation? For Rockwell Automation, the starting point is smart machines. After all, the data already present in machines today forms the basis for making them better and faster, but at the same time opens the door for new business models. "The food industry today needs to be able to respond much more flexibly to consumer demands. Gone are the years when the same product could roll down the production line for an entire week. Now it does require multiple changes in composition or packaging. By using data and exchanging them bi-directionally, in the long run there will no longer be any need for mechanical changes. Everything can be set and adjusted on the fly from the software and supplemented with all kinds of diagnostic information. Digital technologies put that into context and artificial intelligence processes this information to predictively minimize downtime and predict quality deviations. Therein lies the profit of digital," Blommaert said.

Digitizing at your own pace

Rockwell Automation bundled its expertise around this topic in the white paper "Smart Machines. "What makes us a good partner for food companies in their digital transformation is that our core business is the PLC. We know it, we know how to use it to extract the right data from processes and make it available in the right way to all the processes integrated around it. Step by step, admittedly. Digitization doesn't happen at all in one big bang. We make sure that all the technology needed to connect and digitize is already present in our hardware. Customers can then adopt the evolution at their own pace." To do this very closely, Rockwell Automation is working with Routeco as a local partner. Says Blommaert, "Our range actually covers the entire workbench of tools needed for food companies to work smarter and more efficiently. To translate that into concrete user needs, we count on Routeco."

Data as a function of objective

"Digitization is happening at different speeds in the industry. Therefore, we try to make the link between how far they are already in the change today and especially where they want to go and how we can support them in this with hardware, software and services," sales manager Johny Vangeel explains Routeco's role. "Do they want to pursue higher quality? Do they want more energy-efficient production? Do they want less production downtime? We look together with them at what data are needed for this and how they can be deployed. In doing so, we also try to look beyond tomorrow to how smart machines can lay the foundation for new business models, for example. Digital and integrated work really offers opportunities to further differentiate yourself from competitors and get more out of your machines. The advantage of a partner like Rockwell is that they have everything available in-house, from the smallest sensor to the PLC and all the superimposed software. But at the same time, they represent a very open architecture to which you can also hook other components and services to come up with one integrated system. That way, your whole plant can be perfectly known, known and controlled," Vangeel concludes.