Stay sharp, crunch the data and keep your production plant fit

Today, digitalization helps us to stay sharp by closely monitoring all vital production parameters. No matter which industry you work for, in GEA you have a partner that will support you every step of the way. From the drawing board right through to the final product: we’ll be at your side, helping you perform to your absolute best. Depending on the circumstances, we’ll service your plant either on site or from a distance. But always based on relevant data. So you’ll be able to reach your full potential.

Whether you call it Industry 4.0 or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digitalization allows us to stay connected at any time and in any location. Being able to easily share data and expertise with appropriate parties, from maintenance technicians all the way up to top-level management, is extremely valuable. During the Covid pandemic, companies worldwide have found that, even without direct access to physical equipment or physical contact, optimal performance is at their fingertips.

In whatever phase of your life cycle you may be, we’ll be at your side, keeping your production plant fit and helping you tackle your sustainability challenges. Our digital services work behind the scenes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, to safeguard water and to reduce, recycle and reuse waste.

Getting you and your team started

Wouldn’t it be great to give your project the best possible start by fixing any teething problems beforehand? In order to do that, we bring your plant to life, even before the first stone is laid. How? Virtually! Using 3D modeling, virtual reality (VR) and digital twin technologies. The latter is a software-based virtual replica of the physical assets of your production facility that can simulate the operation of all your assets throughout their life cycles. The advantages are numerous: Consider various scenarios? Check! Do it in an agile, sustainable and cost-effective way? Check! Pick the best solutions for your needs long before construction, installation or commissioning begins. Check!

A good example is the complete Freeze-Drying line GEA just recently commissioned using virtual commissioning. The project had a tight deadline and this approach helped to reduce the risk of discovering software glitches at a late stage during commissioning and to ensure smooth and timely handover of the plant to the end customer.

And wouldn’t it also be great if your people could be expertly trained even while your project is still in the engineering phase? At GEA, we can offer your operators, technicians and plant managers many opportunities to familiarize themselves with your systems, even virtually. In a safe and stress-free environment, we help operators who may lack practical experience build confidence and learn how to maintain, disassemble, assemble and operate machinery even before it’s installed on site.

Stay fit, keep running

You’ve chosen to work with the best equipment available on the market and you operate your plant professionally. Great! However, in order to keep your factory running at full capacity and avoid downtime, corrective and preventive maintenance is of the essence. Thanks to Remote Support, whether you prefer desktop, mobile or – why not? – hands-free experts. Even if they’re not physically sitting next to you. You can also take advantage of your own automation system and use it for corrective maintenance, assisted by GEA Codex Remote Support or the GEA Omni Control Panel for your refrigeration plant.

Just like you, we know only too well that immediate and easy access to original spare parts is essential to keep your factory in excellent shape. That’s why we’ve created a spare parts web shop for you. A user-friendly interface available 24/7 allows you to quickly identify which parts you need. You can see prices, check stock, lead times and availability, and, of course, place an order. And if a GEA field service engineer or one of your operators needs spare parts urgently, online ordering is just a click away and we deliver the parts on site by van. Handy, right?

Raise the bar, constantly improve

Even when everything is running smoothly, we see it every day: keeping a close eye on the tiniest details can sometimes enable you to make the biggest difference. The ability to predict puts you in control. That’s why we’re big fans of our predictive maintenance through monitoring and application audits: we take a deep dive into your process, do a thorough checkup of all the parameters, identify areas where there’s room for improvement, and suggest changes that will boost your performance, increase availability of equipment/plant, avoid unplanned downtime and save you money. GEA PerformancePlus is a good example of condition monitoring technology, used to analyze data coming directly from your plant. It can detect irregularities, while simultaneously revealing optimization potential.

In order to monitor the vital parameters of your systems at all times and keep your plant operating at peak efficiency, we’ve developed digital services to make life easier for you. GEA InsightPartner gives you the knowledge you need to track and optimize your processes, recipe and brand, while GEA OptiPartner makes it possible to go one step further and automate the optimization of end-to-end processes. So, let’s increase process stability and boost the performance of your production line!

Look at what we recently managed to achieve for one of Germany’s leading producers of milk powder, for instance. Thanks to real-time plant optimization, we saw an 87% reduction in process variations, a 4.2% increase in production rate, while also lowering power consumption by over 4%.

Together with you

Let’s face it: digitalization brings you closer to us, and us closer to you. By working on similar processes around the world, we are constantly learning and gaining valuable new insights to confirm our expertise. And as the digital landscape rapidly evolves and machine and human intelligence become more and more integrated, we continually develop new services and solutions and optimize existing ones that add value by putting you even more in the driver’s seat of your business.

Besides that, digitalization also means contributing to a more sustainable way of working.  Several factors contribute to this: we avoid outages and ensure a high first-time fix rate. But we also travel as little as possible and minimize the number of spare parts required in case of any problems. And of course: increased productivity makes a direct contribution to your sustainability balance sheet because we provide more output with less input.

We want to be by your side, throughout your production life cycle, and deliver the right amount of digital technology, at the right time and in the way you prefer. We want to help you remain competitive, profitable and in compliance with the ever-more stringent regulations on emissions, water consumption and waste disposal. We want to increase safety, performance and service life, while minimizing downtime and capacity bottlenecks. We want to be by your side and stay sharp, together with you.