For a connoisseur, the choice of vodka is not something to be taken lightly. The choice should be world-class, which is an exact reflection of what characterizes the spirits of The Absolut Company, a subsidiary of French giant Pernod-Ricard. The top-tier product is the company’s celebrated Absolut Vodka.
With production centered in the small Swedish village of Åhus, the attitude toward what happens within the framework of The Absolut Company’s operations is both proactive and uncompromising. Quality, efficiency and climate awareness are characteristic features affecting consideration of everything from raw materials to production and distribution.
How is this done in the age of PLM and digital manufacturing with a production method based on that of the original founder L.O. Smiths in 1879? His idea was to establish a continuous distillation process, which includes several stages to remove unwanted compounds and impurities.
I was curious and contacted someone who would know: Emil Svärdh, senior automation engineer at The Absolut Company.
Although the world and technology have obviously changed since the old days, the principal idea is still valid, Svärd told me. “However, today the production takes place in a highly modern, meticulously controlled, automated and energy efficient production loop,” he said.
Playing an important role in this process is Siemens Digital Industries’ Opcenter, a solution that is part of Siemens’ offerings to companies in the food and beverage industry. We are simply talking about MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) for process industries. Furthermore, Opcenter is a part of Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, which means that it can easily be connected to other PLM and IIoT related solutions.
With Opcenter, The Absolut Company is creating a dynamic platform as the digital conductor, able to switch to digital control and line configuration of the five production lines running in the Åhus facilities.
“The solution fits perfectly with us. Among other things, because it has been developed to cover the entire value chain, from receiving incoming materials to distribution of produced goods, including quality control, product planning and scheduling as well as reporting, trends and advanced analysis,” says Svärdh.
In short, it is factors such as these that have contributed to The Absolut Company’s current ranking as the world's sixth largest spirits brand, with a presence in approximately 150 markets globally.
World Class Manufacturing
The Absolut Company’s position is one that places high demands on all stages of production and distribution, from start to finish.
“We have a production philosophy that reflects these high ambitions,” commented Svärdh. “It reads, ‘One source, one community, one superb vodka.’ This slogan says a lot about our quest to always deliver world-class manufacturing, and in this the Industry 4.0 concept will be a crucial factor in living up to not only current, but also future production, consumer and environmental requirements.”
He adds that this ambition is largely based on collaboration with partners who share the company's approach, which he believes applies to Siemens, whose software and hardware play crucial roles in achieving the goals.
How do you get there? Absolut Company chose to do this via a project in one of its factories in Åhus, using Opcenter Execution Process software from Siemens as a first step in the expansion to the three factories that produce premium beverages for global distribution. To this end, the first production line was digitized in 2020.
For The Absolut Company, this was about an investment comprised of the installation of five fully-digitized production lines, of which the last four production lines have been technically implemented and are ready for runtime in 2021.
What are the company's challenges?
"An Explosion of Complexity"
The background is that technological, climatic and socio-economic developments have created a situation that changes a number of conditions.
“But the changes come in several ways,” asserts Mats Friberg, VP and head of Siemens Digital Industries Software's Nordic operations. “Today's companies are facing an explosion of complexity. Of course, this can be tough, but new digital tools and technologies allow organizations to take advantage of this complexity; we can simply turn complexity into a competitive advantage. In industry organizations, which like The Absolut Company have high ambitions, technology has a significant impact with the activation of things moving in Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Thing (IIoT) track, the use of digital twins and a comprehensive automated machine-to-machine communication and control.”
Friberg adds that B2C companies all over the world are also facing increased and changed rules.
Furthermore, the need for manufacturing to meet local requirements, local competition and markets that change rapidly in demand can put pressure on profit margins. The same thing applies if consumer demand moves towards more variety and specific tastes, which means that it must be possible to change production faster while maintaining profitability, even if you produce shorter batches.
Profitability With Smaller and More Varied Batches
How do you deal with this variety? First and foremost, The Absolut Company understands that digitalization is the key to remaining at the forefront of a changing industry. Developing into a fully digitalized, cutting-edge company is one of the pillars of the business, said Svärdh.
“We are now building a platform to be able to meet and secure production for the future requirements for flexibility and agility in production. With fully automated production lines and increased regulatory requirements, there will be a need for increased traceability of product data and integration with business systems,” he explained.
It sounds spot-on as an Industry 4.0 concept. What does this concept mean for The Absolut Company?
“It is part of our production strategy. For us, Industry 4.0, like other digital investments, is important for keeping pace with developments in our surrounding world and the digital disruption that is taking place there. We are convinced that we will find new types of value creation within the framework of both Industry 4.0 and digitalization in general. Not only for the business community, but also for our customers and consumers. As in all other development, we see that it will require competence development, both existing and new partnerships, collaborations, testbeds and investments. However, I think it will go fast, and we must be prepared,” says Svärd.
125 Million Bottles Per Year
What is produced in the company's Åhus facilities? Absolut is, of course, about vodka in all its forms—including deliveries of vodka for mixing into ready drinks and "limited edition" products. All, however, are still subsidiaries within the group. In total, The Absolut Company produces a staggering 125 million bottles per year.
The water used to make their vodka comes from The Absolut Company’s own deep wells, which have a particularly suitable calcareous water.
The distillation process—which is based on L. O. Smith's continuous process—is still a pillar in the production to remove contaminants and harmful substances such as fusel oil, in order to produce completely pure spirits. What it really means is that the distillation process is a continuous process controlled by temperature and pressure to remove unwanted compounds. Smith's recipe required doing this eight times.
“Today, however, this has developed and within the same batch we can actually run the continuous process over a hundred times before total purity has been achieved,” said Svärdh. “What is interesting about this is that we are extremely energy efficient, 98 percent better than the industry average, which is equivalent to 98 percent less climate impact per liter of distilled 96 percent alcohol.”
It is no coincidence that throughout our interview, Svärdh often returns to climate aspects as a common denominator in all their processes.
“It is extremely important, and we take it very seriously,” he stated. “On the glass side, 125 million bottles is a lot, but we buy bottles from a company that uses recycled glass at a recycling rate of 49 percent. Additionally, in our production today we use more than 85 percent renewable energy. The goal is for us to be 100 percent CO2-neutral in the entire value chain by 2030. Challenging? Yes, but absolutely possible to carry through.”
Product Development and Production
On the manufacturing side, we are talking about a fully automated production.
“We usually describe it a bit pictorially when we say that ‘the first time a person's hand touches a bottle is when it is placed on the shelf for exposure, and the second time is when the customer takes it,’” says Svärdh. “On the other hand, this is a logical consequence of a fully automated production—from defoiling incoming glass to the filled and labeled bottles going out on a pallet, transported directly to a high-bay warehouse in the port for later shipping out into the world.”
For factory production, the site in Åhus has five fully automatic production lines and a flexi line for smaller special series.
“A majority of the control systems come from Siemens, and we also use Siemens’ SCADA system (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) WinCC as our visualization software,” explains Svärdh. “We generally build the production lines by connecting components and machines from several different suppliers.”
What are the production challenges in Åhus and their efforts towards mitigating the climate impact of the production lines? In general, it is about driving the production of large batches, but what Emil Svärdh and the employees also see coming is above all the capability for smaller and more substantively varied batches, which we discussed above.
“We need higher efficiency; we have a high utilization rate and an OEE between 70 to 75 percent,” he says. “We strive to maintain this level, despite the fact that the batches are getting smaller in the wake of an increasingly richer number of flavors and bottles. We are focusing a lot on this area together with Siemens right now. We are building the platform to meet our future demands.”
The platform is integrated with the company ERP system. Both systems create an integrated work order that includes different information, coming from several business systems and merged with other line-specific data. This work order is the basis to set up the production line and which operations should be executed for the products to be manufactured.
“We simply build a dynamic digital path for each work order,” Svärdh summed up. “If we want to change, add or delete any operation, we can now do it digitally. It creates an agility that allows us to meet the changes that will come.”
Digital Twins Are on Their Way
Finally, Svärdh states that it is no longer just the physical value chain that needs to be managed and developed, but also the digital reflection of these flows.
“For us, it is about integrating data and information points that are in different systems completely; this is where the Siemens platform comes in. Doing this will uncover new exciting opportunities, like having data to help us in our continuous improvement, or information to follow the product traceability through blockchain technology. I’m confident this will bring new value both to manufacturing and for our consumers. To do so, we looked around and the choice fell—after a careful evaluation—on the Siemens Opcenter Execution Process.
For every physical value chain there has to be an equivalent digital value chain, asserts Svärdh. For him, this is synonymous with establishing a digital replica of the production lines and the value chain. Doing this through the creation of digital twins are a must.
“That's right,” said Svärdh. “We also strive for this, not least to get a better basis for simulations of, for example, digitally configured batch runs. In this way, we can digitally test and validate that a run works as intended. If something needs to be changed, we can do it digitally before we start the physical equivalent. In fact, it will be faster, qualitatively better and, above all, cheaper.”