Sugar Production

A leading German sugar manufacturer processing two million tons of sugar beet annually faced a combination of aging infrastructure and seasonal production pressure that made network reliability a critical business concern. With downtime costs of approximately €10,000 per hour during campaigns, unplanned shutdowns carried significant financial consequences — and the discontinuation of PROFIBUS components by several manufacturers made the case for migration to PROFINET both urgent and strategically necessary. Indu-Sol supported the transition from planning through implementation, combining network infrastructure deployment with condition monitoring and a centralized process control system to deliver a digitalization-capable OT network suited for long-term operation.

The completed network serves as the foundation for the manufacturer's ongoing digitalization strategy, with remote OT support and condition monitoring in place to protect campaign availability going forward.

Project Overview

• Customer: Leading German sugar manufacturer, >€1 billion turnover, >2,000 employees
• Sector: Food and beverage, sugar and refined sugar production
• Project Period: 2022 through early 2026
• Goal: Migrate from PROFIBUS to PROFINET, maximize plant availability, and establish condition monitoring for new and existing systems
• Project Value: Approximately €115,000

Challenge
The manufacturer's maintenance team faced the dual pressure of avoiding unplanned shutdowns during time-critical seasonal campaigns and managing a PROFIBUS infrastructure that was approaching end-of-life as component manufacturers discontinued support. Any production stoppage during a campaign created not only direct downtime costs but also logistical disruption and quality losses tied to the time-sensitive nature of sugar beet processing. The migration needed to be executed in phases across a large shopfloor and process control environment without compromising ongoing production.

Solution
Indu-Sol provided network consulting and planning for the full PROFIBUS to PROFINET migration, then equipped the shopfloor and process control level with more than 90 PROmesh P managed switches with integrated diagnostics and condition monitoring. Twenty-two PROFINET-INspektor® NT units and five PROFIBUS-INspektor® NT units were deployed for continuous network monitoring across both legacy and new infrastructure. PROmanage® NT was implemented for centralized network maintenance, management, and historical analysis. Indu-Sol also provides ongoing remote OT support to minimize production risk between planned maintenance intervals.

Results

• Future-proof, digitalization-capable PROFINET network replacing end-of-life PROFIBUS infrastructure
• Predictive maintenance capability across both new and existing systems to avoid unplanned campaign downtime
• Improved system performance and stability following migration to PROFINET
• Avoidance of production losses, logistical disruption, and quality losses during time-critical seasonal processing
• Downtime cost exposure of €10,000 per hour protected through continuous condition monitoring and early anomaly detection
• Increased overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) across the production environment

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The sugar manufacturing case study is a detailed look at how Indu-Sol supports large-scale PROFIBUS to PROFINET migrations in seasonal food and beverage production environments.