Miller Magazine Issue:114 June 2019

73 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM JUNE 2019 In 2017, you introduced the Tubex. You are now bringing Tubex Pro to the market. What is this update about? Stefan: With Tubex, we brought an entirely new gen- eration of scales to the market. One key innovation was the use of an electromechanical drive system instead of pneumatic cylinders. This has saved our customers up to 95 percent of energy in the last two years. Keep in mind that a traditional scale can easily consume up to USD 10,000 of energy a year. The electromechanical drive of the Tubex hopper scale not only reduces energy costs, it also enables considerably more precise motion and posi- tion control. An integrated diagnostic system contributes to early problem detection and troubleshooting. Drive components are wear-free, which substantially lowers maintenance costs. In the two years that Tubex has been on the market, we have carefully gathered customer feedback and made many upgrades – all of this learning is incorporated in the new Tubex Pro. Matt: Tubex was also groundbreaking thanks to its new measuring and control algorithms, and its first con- nectivity features. Tubex already performs three times more measurements than its predecessors, and it has a modern on-site control with an adaptable, user-friendly interface. With Tubex Pro, we have made the next step in advanced connectivity. It will be even easier to inte- grate the scale into plant control systems, and transfer data into cloud applications, allowing our customers to analyze and visualize their data streams for better yield management and predictive maintenance, and enabling us to support our customers remotely through the Bühler global service network. What are the benefits that Tubex Pro offers Bühler customers? Stefan: Customers increase food and feed safety with the stainless-steel structure and superior hygienic design. Easy access for cleaning enables fast product change over. With intelligent drives and long-life components, we bring maintenance costs to an absolute minimum while saving up to 95 percent of energy costs. And with the next generation of measurement technology and self-monitoring, we reach accuracy and precision levels that were unthinkable until recently. Matt: With advanced connectivity functionalities that allow integration to our sophisticated online sensors, Tubex Pro is not only a high precision scale, but a key component in Bühler’s universe of digital applications and services. We have massively invested into this, built a close partnership with Microsoft, and developed our own IoT platform for digital applications, Bühler Insights. We bring all digital applications to this platform, which en- sures highest security, performance, and reliability stand- ards. Tubex Pro is a key element in this concept, because it enables transparency and traceability of processes. Can you give a specific example of a digital applica- tion, and what it means for milling operators? Matt: Take our Yield Management System. This cloud- based solution, integrated into Bühler Insights, enables yield monitoring from anywhere at any time. Deviations Tubex