Connected machines form the digital backbone of flexible production. This will be illustrated by trade fair ProSweets Cologne, which will take place from 27 to 30 January in Cologne, together with the International Sweets and Biscuits Fair ISM. More than 300 exhibitors will present their new and further developments at the international supplier trade fair for the sweets and snacks industry.

Something sweet is demanded and it also has to be unique? The growing consumer demands go hand in hand with the digital networking of the production and are getting the sweets manufacturers thinking about complete automation. ProSweets Cologne intends to make the vision of “Industry 4.0” tangible. Flexible machines where the individualisation of the products plays an increasingly more important role are under focus at the supplier trade show – even if many exhibitors at the Cologne fair grounds do not want to speak about the batch size 1 yet. Nevertheless, the batches are getting smaller.

Around four weeks before ProSweets Cologne opens, which is for the eleventh time being staged jointly with ISM, the world‘s largest trade fair for sweets and snacks, the economic outlook could hardly be better, since the global sweets industry is booming. This is the result that the market researchers of GlobalData have come to. They are expecting the worldwide demand to grow by an average of 4.6 % per year by 2021. This means more and more recipes, seasonal specialities and original packing, which aim to attract attention at the point of sale.

Against this backdrop, the question arises for smaller and medium-sized producers as to how they can achieve the necessary flexibility to remain competitive. Add to this the high product quality that has to be secured as a key demand for sweets and snacks through the consistent monitoring of the hygiene aspects across the entire process. Industry 4.0 technologies, which permanently improve the machines in terms of self-diagnosis and error elimination, create the conditions for the demanded efficiency. The packing machines for small-volume orders of sweets that are designed down to the last detail are evidence of this, and this is a special area of many of the exhibitors.

The latest generation of digital fold wrapping machines or top loading and display carton machines is completely servo-driven and is based on a highly modular concept that is consistently applied across the mechanics, electrics and software. In this way, high-end production lines can switch between different formats and wrapping types easily and fast – a characteristic that is to the advantage of all manufacturers whose line-ups include seasonal goods such as Easter chocolates.

Servo-electrically driven axes are also being implemented more frequently in hollow body systems. The high flexibility for the parameterisation makes it possible to produce complicated geometries with a uniform shell thickness – such as a rabbit with slightly angled ears. The example shows that Industry 4.0 is not just present at the Cologne fair grounds among the innovations in the packaging section. Sweets machines are increasingly becoming digitally connected and equipped with sensors that provide an abundance of data. This encompasses aspects such as the support of the maintenance and cleaning processes or active notifications about the service and maintenance intervals through the machine itself. The visitors of ProSweets Cologne can experience this development live directly at the stands, but also virtually on the screens or using augmented reality goggles.

The solutions from the raw material handling are also illustrating the merging between mechanics, electrics and software – from the low-dust product feeding from sacks and big bags, to the conveying and weighing of the ingredients, through to the loading of kneading units and conches. Whilst manual processes quickly reach their limits here, the fast recipe change of automated feeding systems is making small batch quantities viable. In interplay with process control engineering, they introduce bulk materials, small volumes or liquid components to the production process in the corresponding quantity at the right point in time. A seamless batch traceability is secured via the integrated control.

However, the other side of the coin is the fact that a wide product diversity combined with smaller batch sizes leads to an increased number of neces-sary cleaning steps. Depending on the process and the recipe, this process takes less or more time. The mechanical engineers are demonstrating in Cologne what Industry 4.0 means in terms of cleaning with their machines that are optimally tailor-made to the hygiene demands – made from stainless steel and equipped with functions for simple cleaning processes. Casters, which move into the frames of the mogul plant using a sideways movement, are one example here. They allow WIP (wash-in-place) cleaning, whereby the downtime of the machine is reduced and the tray transport system is protected.

n order to save resources, time and money, the principle of the automated cleaning is continually further developed. CIP (clean-in-place) methods are state-of-the-art, where the cleaning solutions circulate in the ­machines. Hence, modern systems have to display an equally high amount of flexibility as the machines they clean. They are still mainly designed for the worst-case scenario in order to guarantee the safe cleaning of all surfaces that come into contact with the product. In future, the aim for the machines is to control the cleaning processes autonomously by determining the degree of soiling using sensors.