Modular Automation for Maqufacturing Flexibility

摘要

The board of directors for Denmark-based dairy Arla Foods has spent a good deal of the spring deliberating ongoing consolidations that are bringing greater capacities to larger plants. "To avoid empty plants a few years down the line, we have to react now," said executive vice president Jais Valeur, commenting in April on a small plant closing. Another Arla executive has spent years improving the company's ability to adapt to changing economic, manufacturing and customer requirements. "As time goes on, we have found that we have to produce more orders and handle more and different kinds of product and packaging requirements for our customers," says Arne Svendsen, Aria's director of global manufacturing information technology (IT). "Customers like Starbucks or the Walmarts and Tescos will reject any product that does not deliver the right, consistent quality every time," he says. "And they want their deliveries when and where they want them." In food & beverage processing these days, flexibility wrestles with consistency at every turn. From meeting supply chain needs to modifying production lines to adapting recipes based on changing raw materials - from fruit to cheese, in Aria's case - you gotta stay flexible. That can be especially difficult in a biological process, such as cheese-making.