Breweries go digital: GEA InsightPartner Brewery deliver real-time performance insights

For years, GEA has been accompanying breweries on their journey to digital transformation. This is why the company has recently teamed up with renowned industry customers to develop the GEA InsightPartner Brewery software. This tool captures real-time process management data, monitors production performance and alerts users to deviations. If necessary, brewers can quickly take remedial action in order to optimize brewhouse efficiency over the long term. In the future, these capabilities will also extend to other process steps in the cold block area.

Understanding the how and why behind processes

“Thanks to digitalization, brewers have access to ever-increasing quantities of data. In order for this to benefit our customers in their day-to-day work, the information must be condensed into a clear and meaningful form,” explains Karlheinz Höhn, who heads service management for Beverage & Filling Technologies at GEA. To this end, GEA’s brewery and service experts defined more than 120 parameters, which help calculate KPIs. “Our goal is to provide brewers with a previously unattainable level of process control. Since technical infrastructure usually evolves over many years, today’s operating personnel can often no longer infer why a specific process technology solution was chosen in the past. In a way, GEA InsightPartner Brewery pulls back the curtain.”

Increasing plant uptime with real-time information

“The fact that we are providing evaluations in real time is a stand-out feature,” explains GEA Product Manager Moritz Braun. “The upshot is that production or quality assurance staff can intervene at an early stage and save valuable time on troubleshooting. Instead of waiting for analyses after completing a brew, they can respond while the process is underway and, for example, extend the boiling time in the wort kettle.” As an add-on feature, GEA InsightPartner can make use of the existing process control systems and manufacturing execution systems (MES), which capture data downstream but only visualize it to a limited extent. The GEA solution acts as a bridge to KPI-based reporting, which is of great importance to brewery managers. Speed as well as precise, easy-to-grasp, real-time analyses are instrumental to achieving the goal of maximum plant uptime. Braun adds that, as Covid-19 restrictions are putting the entire beverage industry under commercial strain, this is now a more pressing issue than ever before.

Accounting for variations in the quality of raw materials

An important motivating factor in Störtebeker brewery’s decision to step up as a pilot customer was safeguarding the purity of each of its various beer types. “Quality – of the kind that’s reproducible time and again – is hugely important to us. It’s what our customers have come to expect of us and why we are positioned in the premium segment. So, the fact that GEA InsightPartner also allows conclusions about variations in raw materials is very helpful,” says Holger Tangermann. GEA InsightPartner makes it possible to compare current plant operations with the data from previous brews in order to instantly pinpoint deviations and dive deep into the relevant brew’s history so that remedial action can be taken even during the brewing process. In this way, breweries can preserve their specialty beers’ unique characteristics and quality over the long term.

Potential for reduced water and energy consumption in phase two

Following the milling, mashing and lautering steps in phase one, GEA and Störtebeker brewery are now entering phase two, which encompasses the brewhouse as a whole including utilities. “We are now also integrating the energy input for heating, cooling, etc. into our analyses. On that front, we expect GEA InsightPartner to help our customers achieve even greater efficiency gains,” says Braun.