STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 33 E DETHLEFSEN & BALK Your competent partner for: Tea Coffee Accessories Confiserie Enjoy the advantages of using an all-in-one supplier with a selection of more than 600 standardised tea varieties, 50 manufactory coffee qualities, an exclusive confiserie assortment and a world-wide leading range of accessories. Visit us at the WORLD TEA EXPO June 12-15, 2017 in Las Vegas, D&B Booth: #823 Dethlefsen & Balk GmbH Hermann-Wüsthof-Ring 16 21035 Hamburg Germany Phone: ++49 (0)40 73 10 73-0 office@db-hh.de www.dethlefsen-balk.de Dethlefsen & Balk Inc. 1005 N. Commons Dr. Aurora, IL 40506 USA Phone: 001-(630)-851-8549 info@dethlefsen-balk.us www.dethlefsen-balk.us Technology aids in more ways than roasting a better bean. For manufacturers such as Probat-Werke, new programs and components play a role in creating a safer product and work environment. "The safety of operators, service personnel, and the equipment has always been a high priority for Probat," said Thomas Koziorowski, Probat's director of product technology and research & development. "We have been doing risk assessments for our products and design safety features to avoid these risks. Increasing safety requirements and growing demands on flexibility of machines force us to assess the safety of our products from different perspectives," he said. The risk assessment process is increasingly more structured and standard- ized to guarantee consistent quality and guard against new potential risks, Kozi- orowski said. Technological upgrades in sensors, actuators, thermal elements, or the safety programmable logic controllers (PLCs) assist in getting the job done right. Probat switch cabinet with safety programmable logic controllers Safety First European Union machinery safety require- ments vary depending on the overall risk potential. Electrical, electronic, and programmable electronic safety features are used to address those risks. Koziorowski points out that technology alone can- not create a completely safe work environment but tools such as safety PLCs, which ensures a suf- ficient purging of even the most complex roasting systems, play a role. "The safety PLC allows us to realize more com- plex and sophisticated safety features than ever be- fore," he said. "Whenever a safety PLC is economi- cally sensible we focus on realizing as many safety features as possible through this component." Just as important is embracing a safety-first philosophy and passing that awareness on to cus- tomers and operators. "It is not a specific technology or any features in particular which have improved our products and their safety features, but rather the way we incorpo- rated safety awareness and the required process- es into our organization. Safety is now part of our company DNA," Koziorowski said. "For us the dual control principle applies and all installations have to undergo safety checks. Without having been sub- jected to comprehensive safety checks, no roaster gets handed over to the customer." "We always strive for the safest machines and most recent safety technology," he said. "If we narrow it down to technologies, it definitely is the safety PLC which has brought us and our products, especially roasters, forward. Complex logics and analyses can be done, which weren't possible be- fore. This technological basis has a great potential for further application developments." – Dan Shryock

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