News

The award ceremony took place as part of the Possehl Digital Conference, which has been held annually since 2017 with over 200 companies and their representatives for development and innovation. The conference serves as a platform for exchanging information on ongoing digitalization projects within the Possehl Group and for the mutual transfer of knowledge. This leads to numerous synergies within the Group.

"Many companies have similar challenges in the field of digitalization. This congress opens up the opportunity to benefit from the solutions of others," says Alexander Floto, Head of Electrical Design at Hänsel Processing, describing the event.

Hänsel Processing's competition entry consisted of a demonstration of a laboratory system to Industry 4.0 standard.

Intelligent sensors and actuators are digitally connected to a standardized automation system via a universal IO-Link bus. This includes not only the electrical connection data, but also a digital protocol that enables all control components to exchange data with each other.

For the focus topic "electrical design", the process system was developed without a conventional control cabinet. It works exclusively with local field devices and only requires a single energy source: electricity.

This opened the door to the third focus topic: the transition from gas, an increasingly criticized energy source, to electricity that is as green as possible. Given the traditionally high temperatures required to cook confectionery, this is no easy undertaking. The all-electric system presented here now helps manufacturing companies to save energy and reduce their own carbon footprint by using electricity generated by solar panels.

"An important milestone for the confectionery industry on its way to climate-neutral confectionery production," commented Tomasz Miczynski, Head of Design and Purchasing at Hänsel Processing, on the new development.

A video presentation underlined the importance and handling of this automation technology in an authentic way. When the system finally produced small figures of the Lübeck entrepreneur, Emil Possehl, in historical merchant's costume, from sweet jelly, the jury of four members of the Group's Executive Board was convinced by the presentation.

The Hänsel Processing team was delighted when the "Emil" - named after the founder of the company group, Emil Possehl - was presented. All the more so as the company was able to beat other competitors, some of which were significantly larger.

Heiko Kühn, Managing Director at Hänsel Processing and responsible for Customer Relationship and Sales, was also convinced that "digital transformation always depends on the committed participation and ideas of many employees in a company".