Digitalization Talk with Jeremy Anderson (Digitalization North America)

My primary goal is to lead the North American team of Krones.digital in achieving our vision of being the source of knowledge on, and provision of, Automation and Digitalization solutions for the food and beverage industries. To achieve this goal my team and I promote all Krones digitalization solutions as well as customize their content to meet the specific needs of the North American market.

To ensure that the benefits of our IIoT platform are fully realized in North America my team works on the accessibility to the edge device. Accessibility in this market is a major growth segment for Krones.digital.

North America maintains a high concentration of Rockwell controllers, legacy machines, and third-party machines. Each of these requires adapted solutions to allow our clients to realize the advantages of our IIoT platform. My team, in cooperation with our global peer network, work to standardize data from these disparate data sources thus allowing for connection to our edge device.

I feel that 2022 will be a breakout year for our IIoT platform in North America. We are deploying our Rockwell adaptation later this year which will be tremendous as many of our clients specify Rockwell content on their machines. Once we have added Rockwell to our proven Siemens and B&R data sources the next challenge will be factory infrastructure. 

Many of our clients have grown organically in their facilities. A typical outcome of this can be that areas of the plant are highly automated (Industry 3.0) while the upstream or downstream processes are running manually (Industry 2.0). As a plant’s Ethernet network is critical for not only integration to Industry 4.0 but as a key driver to continuous improvement my team is focusing on the network architecture as a key enabler for our clients’ IIoT journey.

To me customer centricity and international collaboration are the keys to meeting our clients’ demands. Customer centricity demands that the customers’ needs are principle in the experience of using our products and services. International collaboration ensures that this advocacy benefits the global market. 

It is when these two tenants are combined that Krones truly sets itself apart in the global market.