MES, SCADA, and lot traceability that hold up to HACCP checks and retail audits.
Food & Beverage lines mean recipe variability, allergens, lots that change within the same shift, and unannounced audits. We build the line automation and the MES/SCADA software that documents every gesture — from raw material intake to the labeled pallet leaving the dock — without slowing production down.
Four recurring knots we see when we walk into a plant. They usually coexist on the same line.
Lot traceability that doesn't survive the audit
Raw material lot, recipe, process parameters, finished lot, and shipping pallet must be linked with no gaps. Colored paper sheets and Excel won't cut it: a 4-hour product recall needs structured, queryable data, not a shift leader digging through a folder.
Allergen handling and cross-contamination
Product changeovers across allergens on the same line require traced sanitization protocols, validated wash sequences, and safety blocks before restart. The PLC must know when it cannot restart — not only when it can.
Low OEE from recipe variability
Food lines are high-variability: format, recipe, packaging changes. OEE collapses on changeovers. Without an MES that actually measures changeover time (not as "generic setup"), no improvement initiative starts from real data.
Retail pressure on lead times and penalties
Large retailers demand serialization, valid EAN/SSCC, real-time DESADV. Penalties for wrong pallets or out-of-window deliveries eat margin. WMS and MES must speak the language of the end customer, not a 2008 vendor's.
One team from PLC to plant dashboard — no handoffs between line integrator and software vendor with misaligned SLAs.
PLC, motion control, and safety
Siemens PLC programming (S7-1500, S7-1500F for safety) for fillers, cappers, labelers, palletizers. Synchronous motion control on V90/S210 for fast format changes. ISO 13849 / IEC 62061 documented for audit.
ARIA MES/SCADA with native traceability
Lot, recipe, process parameters, alarms, manual OEE logged at the millisecond. Real-time shift-leader dashboard, fast QC queries, ERP export. Compliant with the traceability policies IFS/BRC auditors want to see.
ARIA Warehouse for raw materials and finished goods
FEFO management for short shelf life, automatic quarantine lot blocks, SSCC labeling, DESADV to retail clients. Plugs into existing ERP (SAP, Oracle, Dynamics) without rewrites.
OT cybersecurity and NIS2
OT network segmentation, PLC hardening, SCADA user management with audit log. IEC 62443 as reference. For NIS2-covered essential food operators we prepare the assessment and compliance roadmap.
We build automation with the standards your auditor wants to see. When useful, we participate in validation ourselves.
- HACCP
- ISO 22000
- IFS Food
- BRCGS Food Safety
- FDA 21 CFR Part 11 (electronic records)
- EU Regulation 1169/2011 (allergens)
- GS1 / SSCC / EAN-128
- IEC 62443 (OT cybersecurity)
- NIS2 (essential operators)
- ISO 13849 / IEC 62061 (safety)
Projects we actually delivered. We name the client when they authorize it; otherwise the case stays anonymous, and detailed figures are shared in calls.
- Challenge
- The handling line for panettone and colomba cakes was completely down, its controls running on end-of-life hardware. An emergency job, a two-month window, and Christmas deliveries that couldn't slip. A revamp on an existing plant leaves no room for a separate study phase. Batch loading, controlled-atmosphere proving, unloading, finishing, and baking all had to be brought back into sync while the PLC and drives were being replaced underneath them.
- What we did
- New Siemens S7-1500 PLC and replacement of both servo axes, with a safety hardware review for machine certification. Line software rewritten from scratch, handling cycles, process parameters, and recipes. Web-based HMI on the ARIA platform, accessible from a browser and ready for tablet use right on the line.
- Result
- Line back up within the two months, in time for Christmas deliveries, and fully productive from day one. Stoppages cut by around 20%, with immediate restart after a stop versus the several hours it used to take.
- Challenge
- Deliver to their own clients a robotic cell able to prepare any cocktail, including recipes the user creates in the app. The constraint: floor staff never program a robot, and the robot's firmware is never touched for a new recipe.
- What we did
- Siemens S7-1200 PLC for motion control and order ingestion via MQTT. The arms are programmed with combinable primitives: every cocktail, even one improvised on the fly by the user, becomes a dynamically generated sequence of movements. Mobile app for ordering, a management interface for the operator, HMI graphics for queue progress, with network and servers managed by IOMA.
- Result
- Cocktail served in under 90 seconds end-to-end. In four months the catalog grew from 12 recipes to over 30, all of them added from a management interface dedicated to the operator, with no changes to the robot's firmware.
What teams ask before we kick off.
Can I integrate ARIA with my existing ERP (SAP, Oracle, Dynamics)?
How do you handle recipe changeover on multi-product lines with allergens?
How long does a typical MES/traceability project on a Food line take?
Are you compatible with my existing PLCs (Rockwell, Schneider, Omron)?
How do we prepare for an IFS or BRC audit with your solution?
Can we start small before redoing everything?
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ARIA Track
Lot traceability station by station: what you need when an audit asks you to reconstruct a batch backwards.
Go to ARIA Track →ARIA Suite
MES/SCADA, HMI, Warehouse, and Mobile as a single platform. Already in production on multi-station lines.
Explore ARIA →OT cybersecurity
Network segmentation, hardening, IEC 62443, NIS2 readiness. For plants that can't afford a single incident-driven downtime.
Go to OT cybersecurity →Got a project in mind?
Describe the line and the problem on a 30-minute technical call: we tell you straight away whether it's in our wheelhouse. We typically reply within 24 hours. From the first call to commissioning, you speak to the same person.