Siemens and Swire Coca-Cola together will create 18 digital enterprises

2021: Digitalization Strategic Partnership Agreement

On May 12, 2021, it became known that Siemens and Swire Coca-Cola China entered into an agreement on a strategic partnership in the field of digitalization. The parties plan to expand cooperation in such areas as the construction of digital factories, intelligent supply chain management and digital technology training, as well as jointly develop reference digital solutions for beverage factories as part of Swire Coca-Cola's digital transformation process in China and around the world.

According to the company, the production data system developed by Siemens taking into account the needs of Swire Coca-Cola was introduced on the digital production line in Hangzhou (Zhejiang province). Following the implementation of the project, Swire Coca-Cola will expand production capacity in the amount of 550 million Coca-Cola cans per year.

The cooperation between Siemens and Swire Coca-Cola marks the next stage of a multi-year partnership. Together, we hope to achieve tangible and fruitful results. noted Lothar Herrmann, President of Siemens in Greater China

As of May 2021, digital solutions are used in a variety of areas of activity of Swire Coca-Cola, including marketing, sales, supply chains, and so on. All employees of our business units are given mobile devices so that they can timely check inventory, place orders, track and record the status of their fulfillment. This helps us to ensure comprehensive management of the main business, product sales, production logistics within the closed production cycle. comments Karen So, CEO of Swire Coca-Cola

Siemens and Coca-Cola's Global Procurement Unit (CEPG) expanded their partnerships in 2020 by signing a strategic agreement that laid down important foundation principles for the initiative. Together with Swire Coca-Cola, Siemens has developed a production data system based on modern digital solutions and automation technologies, software and hardware products, and a MindSphere platform. This system will be an important element of global cooperation between Siemens and Swire Coca-Cola.

The system is capable of collecting, processing, storing, using and managing data at all stages of the production process, as well as expanding functions such as monitoring and analysis of production processes, quality control, equipment maintenance management, fault prevention and detection, performance assessment and decision making. Due to the transparency and wide coverage of data, visual control of production processes, the production data system will help to achieve higher statistical reliability of forecasts, which will reduce the time for diagnosing failures, accumulate real data for the further application of AI technologies. This will optimize the overall digital level of the enterprise and, as a result, increase its performance, provide preventive maintenance and reduce power consumption . Over the next two years, the system will be implemented on almost 100 production lines at 18 Swire Coca-Cola plants in China.

Given the relevance of individualization requirements for consumption, beverage companies reach the next level of development when production is determined by data. The successful launch of the data collection and analysis system marks an important milestone for both companies in terms of joint large-scale launch of digital transformation processes in the beverage industry. Using the opportunities offered by this partnership, we plan to continue to develop the unlimited potential of advanced technologies such as AI, big data based on the advanced MindSphere platform. said Wang Haibin, executive vice president of Siemens Ltd. in China and director of Digital Manufacturing in Greater China

In the future, Siemens plans to further expand the functionality of the production data system - to add real-time production data at the country level using applications on the Siemens MindSphere platform, analyzing all data in a number of areas, for example, efficiency, power consumption, safety, quality and preventive maintenance. All this will help Swire Coca-Cola ensure quality control at the group level and optimize the level of digitalization and intelligent organization of the entire supply chain.

By integrating the production data system with other systems on production lines, Swire Coca-Cola plants can save up to 10 million kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to 3,200 tons of conventional fuel or 7,500 tons of CO2 emissions.