MANILA, PHILIPPINES — At the full-day seminar on “Digitalization of the Food and Beverage Industry in the Philippines” held by Siemens last month, a team of global experts from the company showcased their technological expertise to current and potential customers in Philippines’ F&B industry.
Through interactive presentation sessions, Siemens presented how industry players can discover the potential of digitalization in food and beverage industry. Topics covered include “Digitalization – The future of manufacturing in Food and Beverage” and “Standardization – Set the pace for digitalization in Food and Beverage”. There was also a live demonstration to showcase how companies can “Reduce downtimes and cost with transparent operation”, where Siemens used the example of the dairy industry to demonstrate how both process and discrete workflows in the food and beverage industry can benefit from digitalization. Factors typically affecting the dairy industry are high cost sensitivity and mass production on the one hand, coupled with the growing diversity of available flavors and innovative packaging concepts on the other.
“We’ve been working with a number of global food and beverage players and learned from them about their demands and specific trends in the market, said Roland Heymann, head of Global Food and Beverage, Technical Account Management, Siemens Germany. “In order to respond to these needs, we are adapting our digital enterprise software suite accordingly and are implementing these functions into our applications, our solutions, and our products. While doing so, we aim to bring those solutions to anywhere in the world that has major expansions and investments ongoing for the food and beverage industry, to give all regions and specifically the Philippines an equal and fair chance to leverage our learnings.”
Digitalization the F&Beverage in industry
The F&B industry in the Philippines is a highly competitive one, and it is expected to amount to approximately US$26 million in revenue this year. For manufacturers in the industry, operating productive production facilities requires many factors for consideration, including a consistently high level of product quality, maximum plant availability, optimum resource efficiency – and, increasingly, the greatest possible flexibility in order to meet more and more individual customer requirements.
Additionally, about 1.3 billion tonnes of food – which is about a third of all that is produced – around the world is wasted due to factors such as poor equipment, transportation and infrastructure, rejection due to aesthetics, and over purchase. The supply chain has to be more agile to allow companies to produce the right amount of products to cater to consumer demands, at the right time and at the right location.
Mastering all these challenges today and in the future is possible only with digitalization. Digitalization is the interaction of the virtual and real world. It is a major trend and innovation driver, creating completely new business and growth opportunities for companies. Digitalization of the entire value chain is crucial for catching new trends and ensuring competitiveness.
This is particularly important for the Philippines, as the country is growing rapidly in terms of population and production capacities. Digitalization would lay the foundation of how the local food and beverage industry will perform in the next few years and be able to compete with other countries in the region.
The digitalization of the manufacturing industry, which is also known as “Industrie 4.0”, is a topic of global interest.
Siemens offers the products and solutions required fully or gradually integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. The Digital Enterprise Suite is Siemens’ answer to Industrie 4.0, and it enables manufacturing companies to streamline and digitalize their entire business process, seamlessly integrating suppliers into the mix. They can begin at any point of their value chain, from product design to service, and can extend digitalization gradually, depending on their current needs.
With the Digital Enterprise Suite, Siemens offers a comprehensive portfolio of software-based systems specifically for the discrete industries. It integrates and digitalizes the complete value chain from Product Design, Production Planning, Production Engineering, Production Execution to Services. The result of the integration and digitalization of the complete value chain is a perfect digital copy of the value chain – the Digital Twin. This enables companies to perform simulation, testing, and optimization in a completely virtual world – before ever committing any resources in the real world. The connection of the virtual and real worlds leads to shorter time-to-market as well as greater flexibility, quality, and efficiency.
Enrico Buergo, Vice President and Country Division Lead, Siemens Philippines, said: “Digitalization is an integral part of the industrial revolution. You have this shift coming, it’s about the analysis, integration and standardization. We’re bringing it here to kick-start a very vibrant market which is food and beverage… and we really want to use it as a way for each company to achieve whatever it is they are aspiring and not to be left in the game.”
“The future is always in motion,” said Alexander Grimm, Head of Food and Beverage ASEAN, Siemens Singapore, during the beginning of his presentation session. “Digitalization itself, it’s a thing which is in movement. It’s a continuous development.” He later explains in detail how customers have become more discerning in terms of the wants, and how digitalization in production can address these needs at the quicker and more precise way.
Present in the seminar were key officials of Siemens from both the regional and global headquarters including Enrico Buergo, Vice President and Country Division Lead, Siemens Philippines; Alexander Grimm, Head of Food and Beverage ASEAN, Siemens Singapore; Roland Heymann, Head of Global Food and Beverage, Technical Account Management, Siemens Germany; Christopher Roppelt, Key Expert for Food and Beverage Automatic Concepts, Siemens Germany; and Lito Torres, Head of Factory and Automation, Siemens Philippines.
As part of the company’s commitment to the F&B industry in the Philippines, Siemens will be offering a two-day workshop that would showcase in detail products and technology that can be personalized and applied to their operating processes. The workshop will be conducted by product specialists and will be at no cost to participants of the seminar. Those who are interested can get in touch with their Siemens representative.
