Vangelis Kapnopoulos – PLC Manager, AS Hellas
Olympios Petrakis – Software Solutions Manager, AS Hellas
For more than 30 years, AS Hellas has been at the forefront of the dairy industry, designing and delivering complete production lines for milk and dairy products. Today, it stands as the largest Greek company offering end-to-end solutions for the dairy sector, covering the entire spectrum—from engineering and equipment to automation, digital monitoring, and operational optimization.
Our long-standing expertise is built on an extensive installed base within real-world production facilities that operate daily. This allows us to understand in-depth the specificities of dairy production, its constraints, and—most importantly—the critical points where value is created or lost.
Automation as a Strategic Advantage
At the core of AS Hellas solutions lies advanced industrial automation, designed not merely for equipment control, but as a strategic tool to simplify operations, ensure safety and product quality, and drive overall performance.
Based on modern PLC and SCADA platforms from leading international suppliers, AS Hellas automation solutions focus on stability and scalability. Our programming philosophy emphasizes:
- Significant reduction in manual intervention (in certain cases up to 50%).
- Standardized and validated routines that minimize human error.
- Seamless integration of additional functions, such as energy monitoring and advanced reporting.
At the same time, visualization systems are designed to provide operators with a clear overview of the entire installation at a glance, while allowing real-time tracking of product position. This reduces reaction time and dependency on highly specialized personnel.
The result for the customer is measurable: fewer errors, lower system expansion costs, reduced support costs and full product traceability.
From Automation to Data-Driven Insights
A robustly designed automation system forms the essential foundation for the next strategic step: data utilization. When data is collected with reliability and consistency, it is transformed into a powerful management tool.
This is the core mission of AS Analytics, AS Hellas’ advanced data analytics platform. As a modern industrial analytics suite, it captures data directly from automation systems and converts it into meaningful reports, KPIs, and intuitive dashboards.
The platform features hybrid architecture (Edge & optional Cloud), utilizing dedicated hardware to ensure zero load or dependency on the existing SCADA system. Secure factory-to-cloud communication is guaranteed via a fully encrypted connection through a dedicated SIEMENS device that communicates directly with the PLC. AS Analytics consolidates all relevant production data, unlocking new horizons for operational efficiency. All reports and dashboards are fully configurable to meet specific customer needs, providing a comprehensive view of production within a user-friendly digital environment.
Processing & Filling Process
Unlocking Hidden Capacity with AS Analytics – CIP
Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) is among the most critical and demanding processes in the dairy industry, directly impacting product safety, equipment availability, and overall operating costs.
Through AS Analytics, the CIP process is no longer a “black box.” For every cleaning cycle, the system provides granular visibility by recording:
- Detailed Execution: Individual steps and their precise duration.
- Process Parameters: Real-time temperature, flow, and conductivity measurements.
- Quality Control: Any deviations from predefined set-points.
This data enables a comprehensive analysis of total cleaning time per target and quantifies equipment occupancy. In real-world applications, we have observed that tanks are often occupied by CIP activities for more than 10% of their total available time—an insight that is rarely captured without advanced data analysis.
Furthermore, a comparative analysis of CIP lines often reveals hidden overlapping patterns that go unnoticed during daily operations. In many instances, CIP lines that appear theoretically available are, in practice, used simultaneously at rates exceeding 80%. This means their effective availability is significantly lower than assumed, creating invisible bottlenecks.
Data-Driven Capital Efficiency: AS Analytics identifies this “hidden capacity” within existing CIP infrastructure. By reallocating cleaning targets and optimizing scheduling, facilities can often support additional equipment without the immediate need for capital-intensive investments in new CIP lines.
Equipped with these insights, managers can reschedule cleaning operations to maximize the availability of critical assets. This leads to data-driven decision-making regarding plant expansion allowing companies to postpone or even avoid significant capital expenditures (CAPEX). In several cases, optimizing CIP organization alone has increased net productive time by 5–8%, achieved entirely through software intelligence without a single mechanical modification.Quality, Compliance, and Digital Transformation
Beyond productivity, AS Analytics actively supports quality assurance and regulatory compliance. The execution—or non-execution—of required cleaning cycles is automatically recorded, while custom rules and alerts are configured to flag any deviations. Documentation is no longer a manual burden; it becomes an automated byproduct of daily operations.
Furthermore, AS Analytics drives the transition to paperless operations. By digitizing key production and quality forms via intuitive tablet interfaces, manual records are replaced by structured data. The system features auto-population of data fields (such as instrument readings and batch numbers) directly from the production line.
This approach significantly reduces the risk of human error, simplifies archiving and data retrieval, and creates a unified data repository for continuous analysis and improvement.
Quality, Compliance and Control
Beyond productivity, AS Analytics actively supports quality assurance and regulatory compliance. The execution—or non-execution—of required cleaning cycles is automatically recorded, while custom rules and alerts are configured to flag any deviations. Documentation is no longer a manual burden; it becomes an automated byproduct of daily operations.
Furthermore, AS Analytics drives the transition to paperless operations. By digitizing key production and quality forms via intuitive tablet interfaces, manual records are replaced by structured data. The system features auto-population of data fields (such as instrument readings and batch numbers) directly from the production line.
This approach significantly reduces the risk of human error, simplifies archiving and data retrieval, and creates a unified data repository for continuous analysis and improvement.
The AS Hellas Philosophy
Automation delivers true value only when it leads to knowledge and better decision-making. At AS Hellas, decades of dairy industry experience—combined with advanced data analytics—translate into tangible and measurable benefits for our customers.
| For us, technology is not an end in itself; it is the ultimate tool for improving everyday operations and a primary driver of long-term success. |
|---|
