Tag: Kohl Maschinenbau

  • Smart Connection

    Smart Connection

    Illustration courtesy of Maschinenbau

    Koehl’s new communication platform connects field-level tobacco machinery with the Cloud.

    By Stefanie Rossel

    Communication is key—not only in everyday life but also on the factory floor. On the road to Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is an important milestone. The digital mapping of production plants and their connection to systems for collecting and evaluating production data is the basis for smart analysis methods to optimize production processes. To keep up with the fast-paced development of new ideas and concepts that the fourth industrial revolution brings about, manufacturing companies are confronted with the difficult task of driving their digital transformation.

    Modern tobacco manufacturing equipment comes with built-in features that allow it to communicate data on performance, settings, history and so on. However, the secondary machinery communication landscape in most tobacco factories is highly fragmented, both for machine-to-machine and machine-to-higher-systems data streams. Over the years, many production lines have formed a heterogenous machine landscape. The individual plant components often comprise controllers from different suppliers and generations. Over time, physical media, protocols and data formats, sometimes proprietary, have accumulated, leading to unnecessarily complex integration efforts. Fragmentation also limits the opportunity to extract manufacturing insights from the machine data.

    To solve this problem, the world’s four leading cigarette manufacturers—Philip Morris International, BAT, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands—and the OPC Foundation created a working group about five years ago to describe general requirements for manufacturers for primary and secondary machinery. “OPC” stands for Open Platform Communications. The OPC Foundation is responsible for the development and maintenance of OPC UA, the interoperability standard for the secure and reliable exchange of data in the industrial information space and in other industries. It is a platform-independent, open and license-free communication platform and ensures the seamless flow of information among devices from multiple vendors.

    The jointly developed companion specification for the tobacco industry, named Tobacco Machine Communication (TMC), is based on the OPC UA information model and aims at harmonizing data exchange and interoperability requirements for the common benefits of both cigarette manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It seeks to create interoperability between the various OEMs. The main objective of the companion specification is to provide information-modeling concepts and object libraries that can be applied to model a complete production work center. It covers machine configurations, product flows, setup, service, live status and historical information and can be applied to conventional tobacco products as well as products in the heated-tobacco environment. The OPC UA server of the work center can expose information in a harmonized way to upper-level systems or to other compliant work centers. While the working group started out by focusing on secondary machinery, the new standard 2.0, which was introduced in May, also covers primary equipment.

    The TMC standard can be downloaded from the OPC website. All new tobacco machinery delivered today needs to be compliant with the standard.

    Enhancing Efficiency

    Arno Fries

    However, cigarette-making equipment is known for its longevity, which means there are many shop floors with equipment that was developed before the standard was introduced. For such factories, Koehl Maschinenbau, a Luxemburg-based supplier of processing and logistics equipment for the tobacco industry, has designed a machine-to-cloud solution, the IIoT Server. Based on the TMC companion specification as a platform, the application server enables vertical data transmission to a business intelligence system (BIS) without, in the best case, changing the components’ programming. This way all data accumulated on the shop floor can be semantically processed in the same way to collect and analyze it centrally. The server collects and handles data at the shop floor level and forwards it to a Cloud or Fog environment where the data is stored, analyzed and archived.

    “For the customer, this leads to an increase in efficiency and a reduction of costs,” explains Arno Fries, technical director of logistics and information systems at Koehl. He heads the company’s manufacturing IT department, which implements solutions and products for intralogistics and production logics. The IIoT Server is a proprietary development commissioned by one of Koehl’s tobacco clients. “It’s an easy, flexible, cost-effective and future-proof way to integrate and digitalize established machines into the customer’s preferred Industry 4.0 ecosystem,” says Fries. “An intelligent production optimizes workflows, maintenance, energy consumption and service management.”

    The ability to interact with various programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in a heterogenous production environment is key to standardized data processing in the IIoT, says Fries. “The PLC connection module of Koehl’s TMC server is based on a highly flexible and exchangeable driver technology that is used for communication with different PLCs and different protocols. Drivers are available for the most common PLCs, such as Siemens Step-(300, 1200, 1500) or Beckhoff or for protocols, for example OPC UA.”

    Easy Installation

    The IIoT Server allows for collection of data from all machinery, whether new or old, is OEM independent and provides tailor-made solutions for equipment that is not standard. Transformation and normalization of data take place just in time. There are no programming changes of existing PLCs required. The web-based configuration enables central configurations for all instances. The server consists of a small data processor that fits into a control cabinet, which is required to have two Ethernet ports.

    Depending on the customer’s requirements, the IIoT Server can be installed in a decentralized or centralized architecture. In a decentralized installation, each PLC is connected to a separate server unit, with data being transferred from the production network to the cloud in a secure way. In a centralized environment, all PLCs of a production line or an entire plant are connected to a central IIoT Server unit, which according to the company can be easily integrated into existing server or virtualization architectures. Either way, hardware requirements are minimal.

    Implementation is uncomplicated, according to Fries. “The data to be transferred and their respective addresses are set once for each PLC through a configuration tool. The storage of the data retrieved by the various controllers and their depiction in the TMC information model is the main characteristic of Koehl’s server application. In addition, it allows for storage of data, which the PLC can neither provide nor store. After configuration, the TMC server runs in the background and provides the configured data as TMC objects to each OPC client for further processing. The operator is not involved unless he wants to add a further configuration.”

    Koehl’s server can either be used if existing production lines are to be connected or if an OEM needs a bridge between a machine and the IT level that is compatible with the TMC standard and that he can’t or won’t realize himself.

    Successful Pilot Project

    The pilot project was installed at an Other Tobacco Products (OTP) manufacturer’s site. Three pilot lines out of nine OTP lines were selected for connection to the cloud-based customer BIS via the TMC standard. For each system, an industrial inter-process communication was placed in the respective control cabinet. “With these having a second network adapter, it was not necessary to take the PLCs out of the production network. The PLCs are therefore accessed via a different network than the data collected here,” relates Fries. “In order to be able to compensate failures of the higher level system, the IIoT Server also allows for the archiving of data movements and changes over a longer period of time.”

    Across machines, data about machine running time, downtime and root cause analysis is now collected and can be accessed by the BIS via the TMC standard. Information about material rejects, production defects, material turnover and machine efficiency as well as predictive maintenance and machine configuration changes are also provided.

    “The greatest challenge was the collection of data from existing production lines with different controllers without program changes in the PLC,” says Fries. “After we had collected the data, it was validated by the machinery operators, and since then, system has been running smoothly.”

    Following the successful pilot, Koehl has been ordered to roll out the system to the customer’s remaining OTP lines. Fries observes increasing interest for his company’s solution in the industry. “If a tobacco manufacturer has several locations and lines and a fully automated production, the IIoT Server is ideal because it not only allows to comply with the TMC standard but also to control and evaluate processes.”

    Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.
  • Smart Moves

    Smart Moves

    Photos: Godioli & Bellanti, CPM Wolverine Proctor and Koehl Maschinenbau

    Machinery makers are investing to future-proof leaf processing factories.

    By Stefanie Rossel

    Ed Wozniak

    While global cigarette consumption has continued to decline for years and next-generation products (NGPs) take an ever-greater share of the nicotine market, there has been some motion in the market for primary equipment recently. British American Tobacco, Montenegro-based Novi Duvanski Kombinat Podgorisca and Alliance One Tobacco Argentina are about to build new processing plants or are relocating their leaf-processing sites.

    “Without a doubt, the trend and investment are still toward heated-tobacco products [HTPs] and NGPs,” observes Ed Wozniak, regional sales manager at CPM Wolverine Proctor, a specialist in tobacco thermal processing operating from the U.S. and the U.K. “The consolidation, and in some cases diversification, of some plants is still ongoing.

    “I say ongoing, as the relocation of plants has been there for some time. It is only logical to move or consolidate production to areas that provide a more economical production and/or are also located close to the remaining major markets for traditional tobacco products.

    “This manifests itself in site and engineering service requests, along with the opportunity to upgrade and future-proof equipment as far as possible. This not only means replacement of spare parts and components but the addition of multiple sensors and up-to-date programmable logic controllers [plc].

    “These key elements combined offer a wide range of opportunities to processors and benefits ranging from almost full auto adjustment ‘on the fly,’ which inevitably leads to optimized production costs, to real-time traceability of materials.”

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    According to Wozniak, HTP sticks have to some degree eliminated the need for burley toasters, with most of the chemical process taking place in the stick. “Diversification and consolidation of the drying process into one flexible unit will possibly make the individual leaf, strip, toaster, stem and oriental dryer generally less attractive, presenting a new opportunity.”

    Lorenzo Curina, sales director at Godioli & Bellanti, an Italian supplier of leaf-processing equipment, has also witnessed an increase of investments in the primary sector. “The primary, having a higher level of technology than a normal green-leaf threshing line, is the first link in the chain, which, in order to remain at a good level of quality and efficiency, needs to be modernized. We are not a big company, but we know how to offer adaptability, flexibility, leanness and of course state-of-the-art technology. And we have been called and invited to collaborate in the relocation and/or modernization of parts of the department of leading cigarette manufacturers.”

    Stefan Hahn, managing director of Koehl Maschinenbau, a Luxemburg-based supplier of tobacco processing and logistics equipment, would like to see the investment pace accelerate. “The market situation slowly improves again, but not as fast as we would like to see as a supplier of processing machinery. Last year’s developments showed us the importance of interconnected solutions inside production. Ever since the beginning, we have been supporting our customers in the improvement of their plants, on the mechanical and automation side. Additionally, new processes lead us to the development of new solutions to react to the new market trends.”

    If HTPs grow exponentially in the next years as is expected by leading cigarette manufacturers, Hahn expects upgrades and extensions of leaf-processing equipment to become more important as well. “Considering this, we see the opportunity to increase our delivery of such processing equipment. Koehl is already deeply involved in the manufacturing of HTPs with several different processes and machines.”

    Kohl’s hemp line uses Twister technology to moisten the product before cutting

    Coping with Covid

    While in 2019 investments in the primary sector declined as cigarette manufacturers focused on next-generation products and integrating the track-and-trace technologies required by the European Union’s Tobacco Product Directive, the Covid-19 pandemic presented its own challenges.

    “To save their production, all manufacturers at the beginning of Covid-19 just kept their ‘business-critical’ projects alive. Our development of a Covid-19 strategy to fulfill highest hygiene requirements and the benefit that Koehl has [with its] different affiliate locations made it possible that new projects were and still are feasible to realize. Therefore, of course the insurance of the project realization despite Covid-19 has become a major requirement for all customers.”

    The execution of projects, he says, became more difficult because of travel restrictions. “To support our customers and avoid delays, we improved remote service activities, also with the help of our affiliates in different countries. Furthermore, we have extended our software of standardized machines with intelligent data-logging to guarantee improved online support.”  

    Curina says that the pandemic affected investment in the leaf-processing and primary machinery segments. “But mostly in the first period of the invasion of this cursed pandemic. Those investors who continue to see a source of income in tobacco know that the pandemic will not last forever. So we have noticed an almost unexpected revival of the market.”

    Wozniak points out that with two or even three lockdowns in some countries, it will take time for these effects to be felt by the industry. “While the marketing information indicates that the global decline for cigarettes has been halted during lockdown—in the U.K. [smoking] is reported to be 7 percent up during lockdown—it does not mean that decline will not continue again when restrictions are relaxed. We can only follow our customers’ demands, and at this stage, we do not see any major changes filtering down to our level. I think that the level of cautiousness at this stage is understandable. We need to understand the real trajectory of the market as we emerge from Covid-19 restrictions and then we and the tobacco companies will have a clearer picture.”

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    Eliminating human error

    Manufacturers agree that customer requirements for primary equipment are changing. “What is constantly required from us is the supply of machines with a low environmental impact, with minimal energy consumption,” says Curina.

    “Without a doubt, the ‘smart factory’ or even Industry 4.0 ‘dark factories’—i.e., fully automated, unmanned factories—are being considered,” says Wozniak. “Integration of our equipment via our local plc system to a central control SCADA or similar [system] is now commonplace. The reduction of human error and having absolute control of as many process variables as possible is now paramount. It reduces overall operating costs and increases efficiency in many areas, as well [as] introducing real-time traceability of the product, in any part of the process. The need for this automation is the reason that CPM has within its divisions Beta Raven, which specializes in such integrations, and locally programmers and qualified electrical staff.”

    Hahn confirms that customer focus has shifted toward a higher level of automation. “Therefore, we are proud to participate in several ‘smart factory’-related projects in which we are, together with our customers, developing tailor-made solutions to be prepared for these future trends. Here we see that specifically manufacturing execution systems—the intelligent link between the business and manufacturing levels—are extremely valuable overall systems for a smart digital transformation to increase efficiency, improve product quality and reduce costs. Our systems provide the correspondingly important layer for the direct execution of production orders as well as dynamic reaction to changes in orders, machine states, quality checks and similar situations for the self-organized factory.”

    Stefan Hahn

    As the tobacco sector slowly transitions away from combustible cigarettes, equipment manufacturers have begun to eye other business opportunities as well. Valued at $24.6 billion in 2020, the global legal cannabis market holds considerable promise. Grand View Research expects it to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3 percent from 2021 to 2028.

    “We are following with interest the developments in the world of hemp for pharmaceutical and therapeutic uses and purposes,” says Curina, whose company also includes a processing business for herbs and plants, food and biomass but who insists its main focus will always be tobacco. “The openings are slow, but there are some,” he notes. “Openings depend on the political and social choices in the various countries. However, we pride ourselves in having created the first industrial processing line for hemp for about 1,000 kg per hour. And we were very happy when we learned that the processed product is appreciated by European pharmaceutical companies.”

    Two years ago, Koehl launched an entire cutting line for cannabis. “This booming market is still interesting for us,” Hahn explains. “We were able to further expand and develop the cutting line over the last year. The hemp line is using Twister technology for hemp-moistening before cutting. We can now announce that Koehl has further projects in this sector.”

    As part of the CPM Group, which is based in a U.S. state where marijuana remains illegal, CPM Wolverine Proctor is not allowed to offer dryers for cannabis containing more than 0.3 percent of THC, the psychoactive substance in cannabis. But the use of marijuana for medicinal use is now legal in 36 states and growing, Wozniak points out. “This may change things for us in the future. However, we can still offer dryers for hemp, which traditionally is used for sisal twine and rope and now also for high-end wearable fabrics similar to bamboo fiber. Traditionally, we have always been diverse, with dryers for fruits, vegetables, herbs, chemicals, cellulose fiber and ovens for breakfast cereals, ready meals and many more products. Many unique features in our tobacco dryers have actually come from some of these industries.”

    Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.