Simulation increases the efficiency at Rotkäppchen Sektkellereien

Today, one in three bottles of German sekt comes from “Rotkäppchen-Mumm Sektkellereien”: at four tradition-steeped facilities, more than 300 staff produce high-quality sekt, achieving a turnover totalling around 350 million euros. The sekt winery was able to continuously upsize capacities in the nineties. In 2006, it celebrated its 150th anniversary:

• 1991 – first Krones line rated at 12,000 0.75-l bottles/h.
• 1996 – commissioning of a new Krones high-speed filling line rated at 18,000 0.75-l bottles/h. After Line 2 had been commissioned, Line 1 was used to fill 18,000 0.2-l bottles an hour.

Even after 15 and 8 years of operation respectively, technical director Ulrich Wiegel is still more than satisfied with the two lines’ efficiency, which is now almost 90 per cent. A weak-point analysis and subsequent optimisation by Krones in 2005 upped the efficiency by more than five per cent.
One step is an assessment of the situation on site with the aid of "Mobile Production Data Acquisition" – with photocells and counting systems at the crucial points in the line to specify the optimisation potential. During this process, the buffer times of the conveyors and the machines´ performance data, for instance, are varied. Changeover procedures and the behaviour of the line when production is restarted are examined as well.