Another essential aspect of Industry 4.0 is customized production. The objective is to comply with all relevant customer requirements at low cost. “It seems like a distant vision,” Richard Clemens explained. However, precisely the beverage industry is subject to quickly changing trends. Customized production could be an answer to the ever shorter product life cycles. Until then, however, many development steps and corresponding investments are still needed”.
Fill inexpensively—even in batch size 1
“4.0 RoboFill” could make an important contribution to that. In this research project, a new, flexible automation concept is to enable filling customized beverage bottles and bottling containers inexpensively even in batch size 1. The current project consortium is composed of the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology (TUM), Chair of Food Packaging Technology (TUM), Fraunhofer IWU—RMV project group, the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan, infoteam Software AG, Krones AG, ProLeiT AG, Siemens AG, Till GmbH , Yaskawa Europe GmbH and the Zimmer Group. By the way: The majority of these institutions and companies will be on hand for direct exchanges of information with trade visitors at drinktec 2017. This bundling of cross-domain expertise makes the world’s leading trade fair for the beverage and liquid food industry the “place to be”, including for automation and information technology. In a survey of drinktec 2013, 97 percent of trade visitors gave this exhibition area top grades.