Standardization vs. flexibility - a difficult balance?

There may be many reasons why standardization of the production process is necessary:

• Standards are often mandatory
• Standards improve our workflows and help us to increase Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
• Standards are necessary to keep quality continuously high

Standards are the basis to achieve secure and repeatable results. They can be found at every level: machine level, system level, plant level, conceptual level or corporate level That all levels are connected, makes it even more complex to implement changes. But changes are often necessary. Food & Beverage manufacturers need to introduce new products, react to variable demands, or upgrade production facilities — and therefore maintain flexibility. The zenon philosophy perfectly supports the goal of maintaining flexibility while, at the same time, fulfilling the standards needed. zenon supports standardization with

• object-oriented engineering
• templates
• wizards

just to give a few examples - and at the same time gives you freedom and flexibility through

• hardware independence
• platform independence
• process gateway

and many more features and functionalities. This means whenever you change your existing infrastructure, bring new machines in or adopt processes, zenon supports you!