Maximised transparency in a soft-drinks production operation

The comprehensive, fully harmonised IT solution for producing soft drinks at Vitaqua in Breuna, Germany, ensures a high degree of functional automation. This serves to maximise the availability of the plant as a whole, underpinning four-shift operation with a capacity of 43,200 bph on each of the four bottling and packaging lines. The plant is fully networked. For making the approximately 60 different products, too, maximised efficiency in the process section is assured by a high degree of automation.
The order system – as a part of the management execution system (MES) – supplies the individual production orders for each part of the process. Besides water treatment, this also includes the entire operation involved in producing the syrup from the various basic ingredients, aroma components in liquid or solid form, concentrates or preservatives.
After the production zone, the data of the production batch concerned are retrieved by the line management system (LMS), and linked to the individual bottling orders. Each order contains all the important data involved, like article number, EAN code, and information on the best-before date and the scheduled production quantity and time.
Higher-order IT functions like reporting, batch tracking, raw materials accounting and master data management are all incorporated here, thus assuring full transparency for the various syrup components, right down to the individual bottle in a six-pack.