Bösinger's range of uncooked, smoked sausages with names like Pfefferbeißer, Bierknacker, Landjäger and Krakauer and their hearty, herby and spicy flavours have been hugely popular with consumers for years. High quality and a consistent flavour that is characteristic of the brand guarantee satisfied customers. For a leading producer of smoked sausages like Bösinger Fleischwaren GmbH, this means having a high level of consistent standardisation of the processes. This is the only way in which this traditional, medium-sized company can position its brand products in the hard-fought cash-and-carry sector with consistent levels of success. This is no easy task with a production quantity of 100,000 units per day or 6000 tonnes of sausage and ham specialities per year. In addition to high-quality ingredients, the smoking process has a decisive influence on the taste of the products and the speed with which they are produced. For more than 20 years, Bösinger has relied on the high-quality vapour-smoke generator and smoke houses of Germos GmbH & Co. KG. In its latest generation of smoke generators, Germos is using standard components from Festo for the first time. With their long service life, these ensure a high level of plant availability and thanks to short delivery times sustainably reduce the warehousing costs.
Perfect process quality
The Bösinger plant works round the clock 365 days of the year. "It is important for our high-performance production system that we have stable, sturdy machines with high-quality components on which we can rely completely," says Guido Meurer, Managing Director of Bösinger, about the requirements of his machines. The vapour-smoke generators and smoking systems from Germos provide perfect process quality. Equipped with the DSBC standard cylinder from Festo, the smoke generator ensures full smoking performance within a matter of seconds. Thanks to its self-adjusting cushioning PPS, it controls the supply valve of the smoke generator without requiring additional maintenance.
During the smoking process itself, the water vapour is heated to a temperature of 390 to 420 °C and conducted through beech wood chips. The smoke develops a milder or stronger intensity, depending on the temperature selected. In the smoke house, the moist vapour-smoke is transferred onto the cooler smoked product by condensation.
"When we developed our smoke generator, we had to keep our eye on several variables in the technical process," explains Bernd Wurster, Managing Partner of Germos. "Keeping the flavour and colour at a consistently high level for every one of the ten thousand smoked sausages is an art in itself. Equally important for our customers is that we guarantee them an extremely high level of plant availability and a long service life for that plant. Our systems are real workhorses." As smoke generators can easily last 20 years or more with the right maintenance and care, Germos too must be able to rely on the standard pneumatic components it uses also having a long service life. The move from specialised parts, as used previously in Germos machines, to standard components from Festo across the entire pneumatic control chain, gives the machine builders greater certainty that their smoke generators will have a long service life.
In addition to their excellent performance, the standard cylinders DSBC offer a significant time saving before commissioning and during operation thanks to their self-adjusting PPS cushioning. Their Clean Design, which is free of any edges that would collect dirt,
makes cleaning the plant particularly quick and easy. The low-cost, universal valve terminal VTUG also does its job reliably – a true 'endurance runner'. Its particularly compact design means that it saves on valuable installation space. With the VTUG, valves can be replaced quickly and easily in the event of servicing and the multi-pin plug reduces the cabling required. In addition, practical inscription label holders enable each valve to be clearly identified. The service unit MS4 ensures an optimal supply of compressed air. Its modularity makes it particularly flexible and guarantees quick availability off the shelf.
Thanks to the low complexity of the components, employees in production have a system that is easy to operate and can get spare parts from Festo stores within 24 hours. When servicing is required, cooperating with only one pneumatics supplier shortens the ordering process and the delivery times. Because production can only run at full blast when the smoke generator has a full head of steam.
Eisenbahnstraße 32–34
737630 Remshalden
Germany
Area of business: Plants for the food industry with a focus on smoking, baking, cooking and cooling. Worldwide sales and servicing of hot smoke houses
Riedstraße 5–9
78662 Bösingen
Germany
Area of business: Production of Black Forest meat specialities such as raw ham, smoked rolled fillet of ham and boiled ham as well as fresh and smoked sausages