Interface standard for meat processing machinery

WAS Food - Interface standard for meat processing machines
First results presented at IFFA 2010
25.08.2010 - At this year's IFFA in May 2010 was the interface standard WS Food (Weihenstephan standard food) presented after two years of work to the public. At the project initiated by the VDMA ten member companies of the Meat processing machinery were actively involved.

High optimization potential in the automation processes
WAS Food makes "common language" of machinery
To other food processing equipment applicable

Beside the VDMA member companies dedicated to the NRW Food Processing Initiative (FPI), three manufacturers of software and the Westphalian Fleischwarenfabrik Stockmeyer in the working group. The University of East Westphalia-Lippe in Lemgo and the Institute of Food Packaging Technology of the TU Munich Weihenstephan were instrumental in the realization of the project.

High optimization potential in the automation processes
The level of automation in the meat industry is very low. One of the reasons is that the meat processing and sausage making in many individual process steps such as chopping, cooking, chilling and smoking is right up to packaging. No food machinery supplier offers the full range of required machinery. The customer must, therefore, the individual units are referred by different manufacturers. At the same time, the demands for documentation and monitoring of the processes that shall enable the traceability of the production. To date, the required information from the programmable logic controllers (PLCs), each machine is available in lot of programming work to be used in the operation of data acquisition systems.

Drive control processes consistently and to be able - for the meat processors and sausage producers a considerable relief in light of the high control requirements for food establishments.

WAS Food makes "common language" of machinery
The project has been too easy to see that all automation processes can only be successful if the individual machine to speak a common language. To develop a uniform and non-proprietary formulation of interfaces and data sets, was the objective of the project group. Fortunately, the members build on for five years in the beverage industry established Weihenstephan standard that is now required across manufacturers in many beverage companies. This standard was transferred to the meat industry and adapted to the prevailing conditions.

WAS Food thus provides a uniform basis for collecting data from the PLC of each individual machine. This uniform basis is simple, specially created developed communication commands and the documentation of the interface in XML format. Requirement for this common language is to make the information on measurements, quantities, provide machine and system states in machine control, in order to be recognized over ordered and evaluated. The required data content for this have been clearly defined.

To other food machinery applicable
All ready on the appropriate data words (tags) have a unique number by which they can be assigned unambiguously. Result of these definitions is the fact that each signal and its content can be provided in a predefined format. This format and content of this information can be obtained from each parent data acquisition system regardless of food machinery type and manufacturer.

Food with WAS a first contribution to improving the automation process is done, allowing the meat processing plants, quick to process data and figures for production safety and fault analysis to access and use them for a quick and inexpensive data collection. A transfer to other food processing machinery is possible.

In addition to WS food down a foundation for further automation of individual processing steps. It is the industrial user group - consisting of the pioneers of the project (see download) and new users - under the leadership of Dr. Voigt, TU Munich Weihenstephan, keep on working.