ABB Ability™ BeerMaker’s dedicated intelligent process control solution for breweries will help improve safety and quality, breaking through productivity and operational efficiency bottlenecks
The smart interconnection of plant processes will promote sustainability in water and energy use and drive efficient digital transformation of breweries.
Winemaking teams will be able to leverage modern interfaces and intuitive insights to improve the speed and quality of decision making
ABB announces ABB Ability™ BeerMaker intelligent process control solution to facilitate digital transformation of breweries and improve operational efficiency. The new department kit was designed by ABB Master Brewers, who hold advanced certificates from the Technical University of Munich Weenstephen Campus, in conjunction with the senior team in the process field.

ABB announces ABB Ability™ BeerMaker intelligent process control solution

As consumer demand for sustainability in beverage brewing continues to rise, how to optimize the process and reduce water and energy waste is becoming a top priority for beer producers. Powered by the ABB Ability™ System 800xA® distributed control system, the solution helps brewers improve process quality, engineering and operational efficiency, and enhance safety and plant productivity. The solution is now available for order to ABB’s end customers and channel partners.

The layout of the brewery control room

The process automation solution consists of a technology package that includes a batch control system that complies with the international standard S88 and a new formulation analog digital twin system. It combines the superb winemaking skills of ABB Winemakers and uses a variety of parameters to suit different users.

The batch control system includes rigorously tested off-the-shelf templates and objects, giving operators highly automated and intelligent plant functions. In addition, inventories can be compiled for queue processing, diagnostics, and full Clean in situ (CIP) support.

BeerMaker is designed to meet the industry’s need for an intuitive, visual solution that enables operators to manage process priorities and switch freely between desktop, tablet or mobile devices. With real-time digital twin testing, teams can achieve greater process certainty. The digital twin system is a powerful aid to help companies develop new strategies to easily simulate new formulations, which can fully describe the operating status of the control system.

Brewing screen based on ABB EOW

Other digital solutions based on the ABB Ability™ Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) system can also determine energy consumption, beer or extract consumption and provide reporting and dashboard visualization. In particular, the ABB Ability™ BatchInsight concept can use big data analytics to detect process anomalies at an early stage, enabling winemaking experts at operators and customers to further improve process, quality and productivity through real-time decision-making.

Marcello Gulinelli, Global Head of Food and Beverage at ABB’s Process Automation division, said: “Our new solution has been crafted specifically for the user by ABB’s wine masters and truly combines domain knowledge with ABB’s many years of experience in this field.”

Gernut van Laak, ABB Brewing Expert and global Food and beverage Solutions Manager, said: “We believe that this technology package can be well matched with advanced digital solutions that can be adapted to the customer’s existing installed equipment fleet to help improve efficiency and achieve sustainability goals. We are taking full advantage of the breadth of our automation and control system platform to enable smart connectivity throughout the plant, including shop floor operations, analog, digital and control room solutions, while reducing engineering volumes and always taking into account the possibility of further expansion. We look forward to further working with our winemaking customers to optimize the operational details of the plant.”

Breweries will benefit from intuitive control systems and high-performance human-computer interaction, rapid detection and resolution of process disturbances, unified alarm messages, report management and standard operating procedures (Sops), while engineers will benefit from structured application designs with process technology capabilities and powerful pre-test capabilities with built-in simulation.

With ABB Ability™ System 800xA, global technology leader ABB has held the top position in the ARC Consulting Group distributed control systems market for 22 consecutive years.