“Flexibility is becoming a competitive advantage.”

AI-engineering, energy management and flexible process design in the beverage industry

Countless trends and shifts are driving the beverage industry right now. How can beverage producers position themselves for long-term success in this challenging environment?

Jeff Kent

We see beverage manufacturers facing multiple challenges at the same time. They need to respond faster to changing consumer preferences, develop new products such as functional and low- or no-alcohol beverages. And must be quicker in the market. We are talking for weeks, not months. We are facing a much more dynamic environment in the food and beverage industry than we used to. The circle form consumer trends, to product development to process adaption to consumer feedback becomes faster and faster. Flexible manufacturing is vital.

At the same time enterprises have to improve sustainability and reduce costs while using resources more efficiently. Finding efficient and qualified labour is another field all beverage producers are struggling with these days.

An additional there is a growing demand for more transparency, flexibility, resilience, and traceability across the entire value chain. Consumers and regulators are increasingly expecting sustainable production, responsible resource usage, and clear visibility into product origins and manufacturing processes. Full traceability and trust are absolutely essential these days.

Long-term success in the beverage industry will be achieved by companies that combine consumer-centric innovation, sustainability, AI-driven digitalization, flexible manufacturing, and resilient supply chains. Manufacturers that can innovate faster, use resources more efficiently, and adapt quickly to changing market demands will turn today's challenges into tomorrow's growth opportunities. Siemens supports optimization as an entire enterprise-wide approach or for specific parts of it. We help people develop their ideas and bring them to their customers. More efficient and more flexible than it used to be.

So, flexibility is becoming a core need. How are you addressing this need with your solutions?

Jeff Kent

Consumer preferences change quickly, requiring smaller batch sizes, faster product launches, more recipe variations and flexible production lines. Flexibility is becoming a competitive advantage.

Siemens has served the industry with world class solutions for decades now. What is changing: These systems have to be worked over in an end-to-end optimization process. The formulation and design of liquids are modeled with innovative tools to optimize the product. We are heading from digital to real with an effective set of tools by Siemens. In our world, agility comes from not only having silos but connected environments throughout the whole process chain. We are eliminating silos and offering digital twins in an industrial metaverse to visualize an experience in real time. This allows our customers to be confident and flexible in their production design.

There are many dimensions formanufacturers in their process design. One of the most challenging part is the engineering of the control system, to design the process logic. Eigen Engineering Agent is Siemens’ generative AI-powered engineering assistant embedded directly in TIA Portal. It combines our deep industrial automation expertise with advanced AI capabilities to help engineers automate repetitive tasks, reduce engineering effort, and accelerate the entire automation lifecycle, from design and implementation to testing and validation. It makes the integration process multiple times more efficient. The AI agent guides the engineer step by step through the programming process. It works as a design colleague to accelerate it and confirm the last details. And allows you to be faster even if you are new on the job.

Sustainability evolved from ‘nice-to-have’ to a business requirement. Which key focus areas do you see in this field?

Jeff Kent

Every company is facing economic challenges. Energy prices are going up. Water scarcity is no longer just a hypothetical scenario. We don’t need to remind anyone of this after this summer. It is a business-driven requirement to understand your resource consumption, manage and optimize it.

Key focus areas include reducing water, energy consumption, renewable energy usage, carbon footprint reduction and sustainable packaging. Siemens has expertise in all of these areas. Sustainability is no longer a differentiator but a market expectation. 

What will you be showcasing at BrauBeviale in November to meet these market expectations?

Jeff Kent

On of the things we will showcase is the partnership with Heineken. Together we implement a global energy management and decarbonization program across more than 15 breweries and malt houses worldwide. The initiative supports Heineken's Net Zero Production roadmap, targeting net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 and net-zero across the entire value chain by 2040. We help modelling their energy consumption, automate their energy management, cut thermal-energy-related emissions by approximately 50% per site, recover and reuse process heat which significantly improves energy efficiency and reduces dependency on fossil fuels.

The approach can be replicated across multiple breweries globally, creating a standardized framework for sustainable brewing operations. The optimization of their energy usage in heating and cooling can reduce overall energy consumption by 15-20% per brewery.

This is just one of our customers focusing on energy and decarbonization. We have other projects e.g. in packaging, that allow customers to make rapid changes in their packaging portfolio –with a significantly shorter time-to-market. All thanks to the holistic portfolio that Siemens offers. We give our customers confidence that they can make transformational changes not just small adjustments. 

We talked about AI-powered engineering assistance and energy management. What other options do you offer breweries regarding process optimization?

Jeff Kent

We are very proud of BRAUMAT, our proven PLC-based recipe control for batch operations in the brewery. It integrates production control, recipe management, batch execution, process monitoring, and reporting into a single solution. . I was impressed to learn about BRAUMAT myself, when I started at Siemens and I look forward to celebrating 50 years of BRAUMAT in the coming months.

One of BRAUMAT's most valuable features for process analysis and optimization is the replay function. The function allows users to "play back" historical production data and process events as if they were happening in real time. Operators and engineers can review an entire batch execution step-by-step, including process values, alarms, operator actions, and equipment states. This holds enormous potential for identifying opportunities for improvement.

We are constantly investing in the development of our solutions. Among others, new aspects of our data model as well as  User Interface optimizations are constantly being added for BRAUMAT. We want BRAUMAT to be the first choice, for the beer manufacturers. Adaptive. Intuitive. State of the Art.
Now we have brought all that market experience to another market segment with the newly launched WinCC

Unified SIQENCE. It is an ISA-88-compliant recipe and batch automation system running on WinCC Unified and SIMATIC S7-1500, addressing in its first release the market of machine builders (OEMs). It helps those OEMs to create and manage recipes, automate batch processes and also monitor production in real time, enabling them to accelerate product changeovers with less engineering effort. It is in the center of everything we talked about beforeWe will keep investing in it.

BRAUMAT is probably one of the longest-running permanent exhibits at BrauBeviale. What role does BrauBeviale play for your company?

Jeff Kent

It is a proud and longstanding event. Our top customers attend. We want to be thought leaders in the industry, this is why we are exhibiting at BrauBeviale. It is a great opportunity to connect with the industry and stay in touch with our customers with a significantly shorter time-to-market.