Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491368
48 STiR tea & coffee industry international dated controls for roasting, grinding, and packaging to take advantage of newer sys- tems while keeping and maintaining some older "workhorse" machines. Stuart Eunson, managing director of Arabica Roasters, acknowledged his com- pany is also on a growth trajectory that may soon lead to the decision to update roasting facilities. When that decision would be made is less clear. Any medium-sized wholesaler faces certain questions when considering a fac- tory update: "How long can this facility deliver the volume customers demand? What happens if any piece of equipment breaks down? How fast is demand for product increasing and do we have the capacity to deliver it now? Three months from now? In a year? What can we af- ford to update?" Once any roasting plant reaches a certain scale of production, however, the only way to increase output while holding costs stable is to automate. Eunson explained, "Purely from a manufacturing cost per kilogram perspective, at a certain point, in order to be cost- competitive with other roasters you need larger, more automated equipment to gain economies of scale and spread the cost of manufacturing out more thinly across every kilogram." Whole plant automation options European machine makers have the staff and product lines to address streamlining the work within coffee roasting facilities whether selling to a major brand or an up-and- comer. According to João Paulo, general manager of Joper, "Controls for the whole line of roasters we manufacture have been updated recently. And we have introduced a new control system called BRIGUS, which allows for operating the roaster automatically and being able to totally control the roasting function." With BRIGUS as the "engine which generates" automation customers can move forward with partial or total auto- mation, he explained. Sebastian Kersten, area sales manager and control systems marketing coordina- tor at PROBAT-Werke (Probat), said that the German company has focused on im- provements to support new hardware and software, adding the ability to incorporate "virtualized IT-solutions." Probat has also updated the design of its control systems interfaces to improve usability. Neuhaus Neotec has long offered the ability to program roasts using a touch panel screen with an optional visual system. The upgrades now available come in large part from moving to Ethernet technologies for system communications. For an already automated plant, engineers may need to update wiring and electrical as well as the programmable logic controllers on the factory floor to take full advantage of plant visualizations on operational control computers. Manufacturing execution systems (MES), formerly referred to as process control systems, now make use of modern open source software for storing data and imple- menting a graphical user interface. An MES can connect not only to various sensors and control machines doing the work of weighing, moving, roasting, cooling, and grinding beans but also to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relation- ship management (CRM) systems thanks to the latest software interfaces. Neuhaus Neotec is hardly alone in boasting of better systems integration. "Due to special customer requests, there are new optional software modules available for extended sample management and mobile bin management," reported Kersten. One of the roasters at work at F. Gaviña & Sons, Inc. Joper roasting equipment and controls João Paulo, general manager of Joper