Because SIWAREX DB combines the best of both worlds: the ability to retrofit the facility’s analog load cells while still benefiting from the diagnostic information available with digital load cells. The digital junction box’s features work well in brownfield plant builds: technicians simply need to replace existing junction boxes with SIWAREX DB instead of the more complicated—and expensive—task of replacing mechanics or cables. 
The company also replaced its electromagnetic flow meters with five mass flow meters, which avoid volume conversions during the continual dosing of gelling agent and fruit in each recipe. And because the gelling agent is extremely viscous, flow instruments need to ensure a certain flow rate with a high viscosity amplitude.      
One of the most compact Coriolis flow sensors on the market, Siemens SITRANS FCS300 did just that—providing operators with precise measurements of gelling agents to guarantee recipe control. The flow meters’ small size simplifies installation and replacement, giving plant designers the ability to optimize factory layout by fitting the multiple units into tight spaces.
These eyes and ears of the manufacturing process are connected to the brain of Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 PLC, which all of APTUNION’s maintenance engineers were already trained on before the company embarked on this modernization project.   

With improved preventative maintenance, these operators can assess and diagnose any load cell issues remotely—since they receive error reports for each connected load cell either centrally at the SIMATIC controller or on the local HMI panel.