SIG, one of the leading manufacturers of carton packs and filling machines for the food industry, is networking its production lines worldwide with CONTACT Elements for IoT. Using a digital twin, the company ensures the smooth operation of its equipment and accelerates its smart service business.
Digital services offer manufacturing companies the opportunity to increase revenues and differentiate themselves from global competition. In doing so, they face the challenge of bringing together data from different systems and integrating it profitably into their corporate IT.
Following a successful proof-of-concept, SIG is networking the majority of its more than 1,200 filling lines worldwide with CONTACT Elements for IoT. The company's goal is to operate the plant networks as digital twins in order to resolve faults immediately and minimize downtime and maintenance. With its comprehensive edge connectivity and integrated industry standards, the IoT platform smoothly ensures the necessary data flow from various data sources of the networks, consisting of routers, switches or the ConnectorBoxes developed in-house. Clear dashboards provide all relevant real-time data at a glance and make efficiency and operating performance transparent.
The company benefits from reliable data on the condition, software and hardware configuration or change history of each individual device according to the single source of truth principle and can link these with its corporate IT to form end-to-end business processes: In the event of a fault, Elements for IoT automatically generates a troubleshooting process that ensures data supply of the lines. In the future, this information will also be available across systems in the company's ERP system. This enables SIG to manage connectivity to all lines worldwide and provides a robust basis for sustainably implementing digital business models.
As a no-code platform, Elements for IoT increases the ability of individual departments to act. They can define automated workflows more quickly using easy-to-create parameters without any programming effort. In the future, SIG will bundle its digital service business worldwide in a newly established Reliability Center. "With the information from the real-time data, we can initiate the right measures faster and ensure the operation of our lines," said Detlef Liske, Department Head E2E Line Connectivity & Digital Services at SIG. "The seamless integration and ease of use of Elements for IoT form the basis for our services."
