Offered in an endless array of varieties, and going through complex manufacturing processes with extensive testing until being considered suitable for the human palate, beer is much more than meets the eye.
For a beer to enter the marketplace, breweries have to meet many quality regulations and market demands. Alcohol content, flavour, colour and durability must all be considered, while appealing to the all-important consumers’ taste.
When it comes to manufacturing technologies, once again beer is not just beer. With changes in raw material quality, the high number of brewing processes, recipes and automation technologies and the required optimisation of the brewing plants adding to the overall production cost.
Since 1980 Siemens and Ziemann have been working together to offer worldwide innovation in brewery automation. Ziemann, based in Ludwigsburg, Germany, is regarded as the world’s largest manufacturer of complete brewery plants and, above all, as market leader in brewery production blocks.
Combined with Siemens advanced process control systems, the two companies are increasing the benefits for customers worldwide through innovative brewing with the latest BRAUMAT solution based on PCS 7.
Siemens business development manager food & beverage, Daraius Battiwalla, said that the establishment of a partnership agreement in early 2005 between Siemens and Ziemann on brewery technology was a significant milestone that benefited both partners.
“The close combination of brewing technology, brewing plant engineering and automation technology results in overall cost savings and in ease of engineering and maintenance.
“Furthermore, the BRAUMAT PCS7 control system provides a wide range of specialised services to the brewing industry as well as access to in-built diagnostics in the process devices.
“Most importantly, the system’s internal communications are seamless and are based on the industry standard PROFIBUS network. Only one interface is needed by the operator to manage the entire system,” concluded Battiwalla.
The new elite in brewing control
The Braumat PCS7 is a sensational high-tech standard offering breweries many advantages such as a high degree of field-level integration in the automated system, comprehensive support during the engineering phase as well as a common platform for components, bus systems and PLC networks. It allows brewers to monitor, control and optimise their production process in an even more efficient and cost-effective manner to deliver maximum performance and quality. BRAUMAT PCS7 serves as a standard for the modern brewery and paves the way for a successful future.
Siemens and Ziemann have international experience in installing the BRAUMAT technology. The biggest brewery in Mexico, Grupo Modelo, was equipped with new BRAUMAT technology in just one weekend. The team from Ziemann, assisted by Siemens, replaced the V4.0 S5 with the V5.3 S7 and changed the hardware at the same time.
There had never been an upgrade of this scale before, and the task was immense. The complete brew house, with an annual output of about 22 million hector litres of beer, malt intake and cellar were upgraded, as well as fit out of all central areas with new hardware. The control system was also updated for each of the 175 tanks and 36 new PCs, six servers and associated software were installed.
After just 62 hours, the automatic brewing production was ready to resume full operations. With BRAUMAT PCS7, Grupo Modelo is experiencing a quick amortisation of investment as a result of faster systems with an easier and less expensive maintenance system due to the changeover from Windows NT to XP.