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Digitalization out of the bottle

Digitalization out of the bottle

Dec. 13, 2019

What do brands like Persil, Perwoll or Somat have in common? They’re all manufactured by Henkel. The products are all quite different, as are their requirements for production. Backed by digitalization solutions from Siemens, Henkel is completely committed to maintaining its high-quality standards and increasing efficiency at its Spanish production site in Montornés del Vallés near Barcelona, Spain.

On a neighboring line the bottles for a cleaning agent are filled, the correct filling quantity and also the filling pressure are monitored

By digitalizing its production, Henkel wants to shorten times to market through “learning production”, introduce plug and play equipment, optimize response times, and improve quality to the point of zero-fault production. The production site in Montornés del Vallés, Spain, is one of the company’s most modern and highly automated plants. Each minute, up to 300 bottles of liquid detergent race from station to station on the packaging line conveyor belt. To ensure that the entire production process runs smoothly, checkpoints at each individual step serve to monitor all the parameters, including fill level and correct positioning of the labels. Supported by Siemens experts from Germany, Austria, and Italy, Henkel implemented a complex solution for making its filling and packaging lines more efficient. The overall solution embedded in the Henkel IT system has already increased efficiency by over ten percent.

Up to 300 filled bottles per minute run through production on line 16

The dashboard directly on line 16 visualizes the operating states of the machines as well as the overall performance of the filling and packaging

Constant watch on order data and any deviations at the Henkel’s production site at Montornés del Vallés, Spain