Photos courtesy of Bühler.
Digitalization contributes significantly to Bühler’s goal of slashing energy consumption and waste in the food chain by 30% by the year 2020.
“One-third of all food is wasted or never reaches consumers in the first place,” said Johannes Wick, chief executive officer of the Grains & Food business. “By applying digital solutions, we are making targeted efforts to make food production more sustainable and safer.”
Bühler is presenting innovations such as sensor technologies for pasta production, predictive maintenance of durum processing systems, or consistent process monitoring based on new sorting technologies.
“With digitalization and the Internet of Things, we are in a position to launch entirely new services enabling our customers to gain greater transparency in their production processes,” Wick said.
“Digitalization is an important driver in our aim to reduce energy consumption and food waste in the production process by 30%,” said Ian Roberts, chief technology officer of Bühler.
Smart automation solutions enable customers to decrease their retracing and monitoring administration requirements from material reception to loadout by as much as 80%. The potential of new digitalization solutions in the food industry is enormous: in 2017, Bühler already launched 10 digital solutions. Another 50 additional ones are currently under development.
Bühler is launching its sensor PastaSense at the Ipack-Ima. This solution allows pasta makers to monitor the entire process from raw materials to the end product on the basis of sensor technology. It eliminates the need for costly manual checks. The sensors applied analyze the composition and color characteristics of the raw materials and the finished pasta products throughout the production process, supplying pasta producers with real-time information on moisture, protein, and ash contents as well as product color and possible discolorations.
This enables them to enhance the quality of their products and to respond quickly and in a targeted manner to production errors, Bühler said. Fewer manual checks and lower production losses allow the capital investment to be fully paid back within one year.
With its Osiris vertical grinder, Bühler is for the first time presenting at the Ipack-Ima a grinder for durum millers that is completely equipped with diamond technology. This achieves a throughput capacity of up to 12 tonnes of grain per hour. Customers also benefit from cloud-based maintenance options. Predictive maintenance allows them to perceptibly reduce maintenance costs and downtimes, Bühler said.
In a number of breakout sessions, experts from Bühler and leading industry representatives will focus their attention on issues such as hygienic design, retraceability in the food chain, food fraud, alternative proteins, and digitized value chains.
