Competition calls for industry ‘game changers’

6th March 2015

By: Mia Breytenbach

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: Features

  

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Students participating in the 2015 PneuDrive Challenge engineering design competition will need to design “game changers” for the food and beverage industry, says drive engineering company SEW-Eurodrive.

This year’s competition roadshows started at the end of last month, and food and beverage industry representatives will be on the judging panel, says SEW-Eurodrive communications GM and PneuDrive Challenge custodian Rene Rose.

“In 2015, the competition organisers will be on the lookout for talented young engineers brave enough to think out of the box and with the potential to design applications that could significantly impact on the food and beverage industry,” she tells Engineering News.

Rose adds that, by challenging mechanical, electrical and mechatronic engineering students to design applications that can improve productivity, reduce waste and ultimately improve the bottom line for businesses in the food and beverage industry, SEW-Eurodrive and pneumatics solutions provider Pneumax have created a valuable platform that more closely aligns academic potential and the real needs of business.


Rose highlights that the Department of Trade and Ind-ustry’s statistics for commodities associated with the food and beverage industry indicate that the industry was valued at more than R132-billion in 2013.

Nevertheless, food and beverage companies are under pressure worldwide, with small, medium-sized and large businesses facing a myriad of essentially unpredictable challenges, says Rose.

These challenges include adverse weather conditions, legislation changes, rising commodity prices, increasing transportation costs and consumer awareness.

While Rose points out that large companies have more resources and better access to capital to address challenges, small to medium-sized processors and manufacturers have to proactively find solutions if they want to maintain or increase their market share. She adds that these businesses, which often lack easy access to finance, need to unlock potential growth opportunities by implementing efficient and well-managed systems.

“In light of this, innovative ideas from talented engineering students could play an important role.”

The PneuDrive Challenge is, therefore, looking for key game- changing ideas that include increased efficiency, with minimal human intervention, but which also take the environment into consideration.

“Technology is always evolving and opportunity exists for companies to upgrade facilities with more efficient solutions using the latest technology. Automation also leads to more productivity,” highlights Rose.

She maintains that the food and beverage industry is specifically well placed for automation and she hopes that the industry will use some of the design ideas produced during the competition to implement more automation technologies in factories.

Rose adds that some food processing plants are functioning on old equipment, and with the current power crisis hampering productivity nationwide, it is critical to re-evaluate the benefits of using old equipment in terms of energy consumption.

“Several industry stakeholders have started standardising their businesses by upgrading their current lines or acquiring newer equipment lines. “However, as existing working equipment cannot just be discarded, only older units that have failed are replaced with new equipment.”

Rose concludes that companies, therefore, take a long-term view regarding the standardisation process and the incorporation of energy-saving strategies and better technology.

Edited by Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

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