The size of companies in the brewery sector varies as in no other industrial sector - from the small pub brewery up to plants with an annual output of 5 million hl/a.

The requirements to be met by automation and MES solutions for breweries are therefore particularly varied. Whereas in small breweries, usually only the brewhouse and perhaps some cleaning systems are automated based on independent solutions, the plants in breweries with a size of about 100,000 hl/a require a consistent automation solution across the entire production process. Large breweries are operated as fully automatic production facilities controlled from a centralized control center.

The main tasks of MES for breweries include quality assurance and the support of production planning with the necessary material flow and inventory data. Furthermore, they support the plant operator in the evaluation of production considering aspects of product quality and efficiency.

The process control system and the MES are closely interlinked with regard to the flow of production. At many points, MES functions are available on the level of the PLS. And in order to ensure that production remains completely safe even without MES, it is essential to make MES functions available in the process control system.

MES functions

• Resource management with production-oriented materials management
• Specification management
• Detailed planning
• Dispatching of operations
• Execution management
• Data acquisition
• Batch tracking
• Analysis