We live in exciting times. What does this mean for you, as an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in the food and beverage industry? Here, Emilian Axinia, Director Industry Management Sustainability Solutions and F&B at automation supplier COPA-DATA examines the current HMI challenges of OEMs in the Food & Beverage industry. Learn more about our new guide regarding 5 principles for HMI excellence.
We’ve experienced a great deal of change in recent years. At a global level, the COVID-19 pandemic brought numerous challenges. Supply chains were disturbed and reaching customers suddenly became very difficult. From this challenging experience, the industry learned to invest in being more resilient and more innovative. Further, sustainability goals are a great common purpose with which we all want to engage.
It is inspiring to see how manufacturing is transforming towards Net Zero targets. Increasing energy costs further strengthened the focus on setting higher optimization ambitions. Plus, many companies are facing the challenge to extend and upskill their workforce. We all must change if we want to confidently strive for a better future. This entire change journey needs strong leadership and the newest technologies, alongside product, process and business model innovation.
Tools for transformation
Automation and digitalization technologies deliver highly impactful and proven tools. How do you leverage them in a way so that your company can successfully meet the challenges of our times and create new opportunities for your business?
In answer to these challenges, COPA-DATA shares our experience with leading OEMs and Food & Beverage manufacturing companies. We wrote a guide for you, with our focus on a key part of every machine or piece of equipment used in the Food & Beverage industry: the human machine interface (HMI).
For your end customer, the way the machine is operated strongly impacts their return on investment (ROI) and the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of their entire production line. The way the HMI solution is engineered impacts significantly on the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the machine’s lifecycle. An HMI is much more than what it was a decade ago: it does much more for your end customer. Today, it goes beyond the point of interaction between production teams and sophisticated processes.
As a machine builder, your ability to design HMIs which fulfill these needs and put these benefits in reach for your end customers is an important source of competitive differentiation and advantage. Your choice of HMI software can impact machine capabilities, the machine lifecycle, your profits, ongoing revenue and time to market.
5 Principles for HMI Excellence
Our guide will consider the five principles every equipment producer should embrace when creating the best HMI for their machines. Discover how your choice of HMI software enables excellence.
- Reduce dependencies, by design: Unbundle solutions based on technologies with different lifecycles and uncertain availability to provide your customers with long-lasting equipment.
- Create an HMI which makes your machine special: Go beyond the expected features. Your machine can implement more capabilities if you use automation and digitalization technology more intelligently to add value for your end customers.
- Create the best experience for machine operators: Invest in radical empathy toward every HMI user – from operators to maintenance engineers and process specialists.
- Enable easy integration: Your machine can be smarter and better connected when you seek to go beyond automation to implement digital transformation for you and your end customers.
- Engineering solutions for now and forever: How you engineer your machine today will affect how you maintain and update it tomorrow. By optimizing your machine’s lifecycle, you not only reduce costs and address resource scarcity, you enable a more sustainable future.
A guide for OEMs to gain competitive advantage
Now it’s your turn. We invite you to read the full guide. Just submit the form at the end of the article here.
Please reach out, we are delighted to hear your feedback and learn about your own experiences.
