Contact
PRODUCTSSOLUTIONSINDUSTRIESCOMPANYCUSTOMER SERVICEDOWNLOADSBlogs

Interview
“In the future, we will be able to locate the interfaces between IT and production devices anywhere.”

Interview with Dr. Tobias Voigt, co-founder of the Weihenstephaner Standards at the Department for Food Packaging Technology at the Technical University in Munich.

Market demands are becoming more specialized, requiring increasing flexibility from companies in the processing industry. To be able to react to the market, production must be quickly convertible, and in the best case is controlled by manufacturer-independent systems. In addition, the relevant data must be constantly available in order to be evaluated and used in a targeted way. Dr. Tobias Voigt explained in an interview with us how uniform standards help to structure processes and communication, and which challenges need to be mastered.

Herr Dr. Voigt, adaptable production is an important topic, particularly in the processing industry. How does this look, specifically in the area of food production and packaging?

Industrial food production and packaging occurs in large amounts and uses high performance systems. However, the variety of items has expanded greatly in the last few years, and continues to do so even more rapidly. This requires smaller batch sizes and higher levels of flexibility at packaging systems. To be able to continue to economically produce despite the increase in the necessary conversions and retrofitting processes, automation and networking of various departments and subsystems are increasingly required.

What exactly is covered by the Weihenstephaner Standards?

The Weihenstephaner Standards specify communication between food production and packaging machines and higher level IT systems. If a food producer or packer wants to comprehensively monitor production, the production devices must provide the data relevant for this. In addition, the machines and production IT must speak the same language. Therefore, the Weihenstephaner Standards precisely define the data, in content and format, that machines must provide for efficiency monitoring to ensure quality assurance or internal traceability. They also define how the communication should be carried out technically, and how the data can be evaluated.