30 n FOOD AND BEVERAGE March 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com PepsiCo automates its first warehouse in Poland PepsiCo has recently installed its rst automated warehouse in Poland. The facility, at the company’s Środa Śląska factory, has 9,000 locations for holding nished goods. The Środa Śląska factory, which covers an area the size of seven football pitches, is PepsiCo’s most sustainable site in Europe. Every year, it turns 60,000 tonnes of potatoes and 15,000 tonnes of corn into Lay’s and Doritos crisps. It distributes thousands of pallets daily to Poland, Germany and other countries in Europe. The new automated warehouse receives pallets of goods via electric monorail and conveyor systems, and carries out thousands of movements every day. The warehouse was supplied by the Spanish warehouse technology and intralogistics software specialist, Mecalux, which also provided its Easy WMS warehouse management system to control inventory status in real time. The software will be integrated with PepsiCo’s ERP system to ensure that operations run smoothly, coordinating ows of goods from production until they are ready for distribution to clients. “The production process is fully integrated with the automated warehouse,”says Pepsico’s warehouse manager, Maciej Pietrusa,. “This means each bag of potato crisps is transferred automatically from production to picking, palletising and loading onto the lorry.” n The global food and beverage company PepsiCo is best known for its brands such as Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker and SodaStream, each of which generates more than $1bn in revenue every year. PepsiCo’s products are consumed more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries around the world. X-ray inspection system is a towering success The German X-ray inspection specialist Sesotec supplies equipment for detecting foreign objects in foodstus, and sorting and analysing materials. The company employs more than 740 people and has subsidiaries in Singapore, China, the US, India, Canada and Thailand, as well as 60 partners around the world. The company has developed an X-ray inspection system for the food industry that detects foreign objects in packaged and unpackaged products quickly and reliably. The Raycon D+ HX LW Hygienic inspection system complies with food industry guidelines.“It combines highly ecient foreign body detection with maximum user-friendliness and hygienic design, ensuring reliable protection against complaints and recalls,”says Johann Süß, an X-ray engineer in Sesotec’s electrical design department. In use, bulk materials are distributed evenly across the width of a conveyor belt via an integrated feed hopper, ready to be inspected. The scanner detects not only metals, but also contaminants such as glass, ceramics, raw bones, PVC and stone. “As soon as the scanner detects a foreign object – no matter how small – it is sorted out,”Süß explains“The system stops immediately in the event of an ‘error status’and a signal light clearly indicates this, allowing the machine operator to react immediately, not only preventing contamination of the food, but also avoiding long downtimes.” All of the system’s components are protected to IP69 and can be cleaned repeatedly and intensively without abrasion. This also applies to a ninesegment signal tower which displays the system’s status in colours across its entire surface. When the X-rays are on, a red signal lights up. Green means that the food is being inspected, yellow indicates a fault in the system, and blue indicates an audit check. The visual display is reinforced by an audible alarm, which indicates that there is a fault condition – for example, that an inspection has been interrupted, or that the conveyor belt has stopped. Sesotec put some eort into ¡nding a suitable signal tower and assessed several options.“We were looking for a light that not only had a high degree of protection, but also complied with all applicable regulations in the food sector and was constructed in accordance with hygienic design guidelines,”Süß reports. The only signal tower that met all of his requirements was Werma’s eSign LED tower. Its modular design supports various signalling modes with multiple colours, brightness levels and illuminated images – from classic trac light displays to customerspeci¡c con¡gurations. The signal tower not only ensures a quick and clear overview of the inspection process, but also allows rapid intervention and reaction in the event of faults or error messages. Pepsico’s automated Polish warehouse has 9,000 locations for ¡nished goods. Sesotec engineer Johann Süß proudly displays his X-ray inspection system with its colour-coded signal tower
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