Bio-on S.p.A., a manufacturer of high quality, 100% biodegradable bioplastic, has chosen Siemens automation and plant control and management systems to create an Industry 4.0 environment at its PHA bioplastic production plant at Castel San Pietro Terme, near Bologna (Italy).

“Bio-on is a wonderful example of industry finding a way of being sustainable with plastic,” says Giuliano Busetto, Country Division Lead Digital Factory and Process Industries and Drives at Siemens Italia and Administrator of Siemens Industrial Software Srl.
“We are proud to support the development of this industry through our innovative technology, through integration between the world of automation, process control and Information Technology, through our industrial software platforms, bolstered by our unique positioning throughout the life cycle of the production process.”
Bio-on, with the support of Siemens, works with a digital model of the plant (the so-called digital twin), placing automation and data at the heart of the design.
“The domination of steel over software should end,” says Bio-on Chairman and CEO Marco Astorri. “Industrial design must be centred on automation because only then can true efficiency be achieved, not just in energy terms but also plant optimisation. We are confident that this collaboration with Siemens can be extended to all our new bioplastic production plants built in the future around the world.”
The Castel San Pietro Terme plant design started out with plant management and automation systems before moving on to plant engineering and service structures. This process makes a major contribution towards changing the mentality of designers and creating new cross-sector skills among engineers.
Siemens' supervision, control and automation technologies are at the heart of the plant that Bio-on recently opened in Italy - the world's first plant producing special bioplastics for cosmetics uses: biopolymer micro-spheres made by fermenting non-pathogenic bacteria fed on plant waste (sugar beet, glycerol, fruit, potatoes and sugar cane waste); a 100% natural and sustainable supply chain with zero impact on the environment.
Siemens control and supervisory systems confer a number of advantages in terms of production, economic, energy, production chain reliability, environmental and, last but not least, security. These systems enhance the skills and experience of the technicians overseeing the production process and, using data generated by the machines, can take accurate decisions based on real information. This helps reduce or eliminate errors and achieve extremely high production standards.
Bio-on has entrusted process control at its Castel San Pietro Terme plant and automation management to the Siemens Simatic PCS7 DCS in order to ensure more effective programming. The process data archiving system, built into the PCS7 and called MIS (Management Information System), provides real-time analysis and evaluation to optimise production over the short and long term. An MIS acquires process data, laboratory analysis data, data on fuel consumption, efficiency, wear and tear of components, etc. and makes it available for display in various significant and intuitive graphic forms. This data can be shared in a network in the form of daily, weekly or monthly summary tables and is used to generate trends and reports.

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http://www.bio-on.it