Aucotec’s software system Engineering Base (EB) has been selected by IMA DAIRY & FOOD, one of the world’s leading packaging solutions companies, for plant engineering functions. The key decision maker was IMA DAIRY & FOOD’s subsidiary Hassia, which specialises in high-quality forming, filling and sealing machinery for the dairy and food industries.
“At IMA DAIRY & FOOD, different machinery lines of the group operate together so, for us, consistent, uniform planning is a must,” says Engineering Director Andreas Kurth, whose contributions to regular exchanges with specialist colleagues at other IMA DAIRY & FOOD subsidiaries are vital.
Process engineering integrated
© IMA DAIRY & FOODThe impetus for the decision came from EB’s track record in process engineering and the simple link to these special planning requirements. “In our new aseptic area which ensures hygienic machines with cleanliness that is up to food production standards, while also handling yoghurt tubs, milk pouches, etc, we wanted to make our electrical systems equally “fit” for the process engineering,” explains Kurth. “A number of suppliers’ products are well capable of handling pure electrical
engineering, but this combination of electrical and process engineering expertise plus interdisciplinary working is unique,” says the department chief.
As well as enabling parallel planning by different disciplines and locations on a single project, the database-driven nature of EB guarantees maximum consistency. Duplicate data inputs, transfers and elaborate reconciliations are a thing of the past. For the firm working in a modular way, EB secures knowledge by its use of blocks that require processing only once, and generates time savings, for instance with its highly-flexible handling of variants and freely-scalable multi-user inputs. IMA DAIRY & FOOD regarded the options for linking EB to SolidWorks as a further plus.
A new level
The other companies in IMA DAIRY & FOOD Group will gradually be switching to EB. The route has been prepared to perfection: data acceptance functions more or less at the press of a button because a number of IMA DAIRY & FOOD units have been working for some time with AUCOTEC tools of which EB is the successor. But as Andreas Kurth himself admits, it was not just the time-saving aspect that persuaded him to take the partnership to a new level but above all the many years of trusted collaboration with AUCOTEC.
