Each uCPS processes the data of a single machine and sends it to ICS Cloud for viewing

“Energy efficiency is one of the main aspects to be thoroughly investigated and understood if you want to optimize the costs of a production plant. Each manufacturing sector requires a significant energy input to achieve its production objectives and the milling industry is no exception, as it typically uses electricity to operate the machines for the production of compressed air and in some cases to produce thermal energy. The conscious and optimized use of energy is internationally considered a practice of strategic importance. Some standards have been defined, ISO 50001 being the main one, aimed at stating the requirements to create and maintain a power management system. The goal is to allow an organization to pursue the continuous improvement of its energy performance with a systemic approach. Some peculiarities of the milling sector and Industry 4.0 technologies offer the opportunity to address the topic in more depth and the opportunity to achieve better levels of energy performance. “

“Nowadays, most of the companies”, says Davide Cascella, Chief R&D Officer of Idea75, “are facing with digital transformation, a great opportunity to create new value through greater transparency of plant operations, the ability to customize each processed product and the ability to offer customers services associated with the standard finished product “.

Digital transformation projects inevitably present the typical challenges of applying innovative technologies, like virtual industrialization, the digital twin and the MES. “The milling sector, in particular, still experiences a wide adoption of traditional solutions and processes manually managed by the operators”, explains Cascella, “consequently we had to deal with the problem of standardizing one solution on heterogeneous systems for automation architecture. We worked with HR and with the process owners to simplify the adoption of new technologies and we initialized a phase of structuring and formalizing the historically known production process, managed mainly on the basis of the experience of the operators “.

The “Innovation 4.0 Award”, created as part of the A&T event, scheduled this year from 18 to 20 April at the Oval Lingotto in Turin, rewards technology transfer projects facilitating product and process innovation.

The solution of Idea75, a startup company that creates innovative solutions for the optimization of energy-intensive companies, applied to the Casillo Group factories, received the “Innovation 4.0 Award”, in the “Companies” category at the 2017 edition of A&T.

Hundreds of excellent companies, universities and startups participated in the award, presenting ideas and application cases that were concretely useful in encouraging the introduction of innovative technologies and the Industry 4.0 model in individual companies. The award was conceived in collaboration with the main business associations: the scientific committee selected 97 contributions of particular relevance, thus building an information program of concrete utility that has brought further added value to A&T, an Italian exhibition dedicated to innovative technologies and solutions. With a view to 4.0

The dynamism imposed by the market, the need to combine quality and costs, integration from the perspective of the supply chain force us to re-study the production process within a factory. For these reasons, the Casillo Group, active in the production and marketing of flours, chose Idea75 as its partner, startup and Esco (Energy Service Company) Uni Cei 11352: 2014 certified.
From the collaboration between of these two companies, the Molino 4.0 project started in 2015 and was completed at the end of 2016. It was applied to the Casillo Group plants, involving the digital and innovative transformation of the production processes and embracing the concept of “cognitive automation”, in order to produce useful information for the company within an Industry 4.0 perspective.