How digitalisation/automation addresses sugar production challenges

While every sugar producer faces specific manufacturing challenges, there are several that resonate across the industry. Among today's most pressing concerns include the need to optimise energy consumption, reduce material use and inventory costs and increase asset utilisation and throughput. Other priorities include the need to improve quality and reduce variations, errors and waste while maximising material traceability and fulfilling regulatory compliance. Finally, there is a greater awareness and desire to embrace an agile manufacturing environment. Solutions to these challenges can be found in the new world that is emerging with the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and the application of digital technologies. Here we examine how the technology can be applied to the horizontal and vertical value chains. We suggest that most of today's digital systems are not fully integrated. Companies, suppliers and customers are rarely closely linked. Nor are departments such as engineering, production and service. Functions from the enterprise to the plant floor level are not fully integrated. Even engineering itself - from products to plants to automation - lacks complete integration. But with digitalisation and Industry 4.0, companies, departments, functions and capabilities will become much more cohesive, as cross-company, universal data-integration networks evolve and enable truly automated value chains.