I have been part of the PRECOGIT team for 6 months now. About 6 months ago also our
Meet-Up series started.

 

At this point, I would like to take a moment to sum up. What did we do in these Meet-Ups, what has they brought for us and how was the corresponding feedback of the participants.

 

The agenda of the Meet-Ups has always been the same. It starts with a welcome and an introduction of the participants, followed by a keynote speech on the topic of the day and then we move into the discussions. In the end, the topics that we couldn not discuss due to time constraints are collected and afterwards, there is a short feedback session.

 

We started in February with our first Meet-Up, “How can SAP support the #BreweryoftheFuture?”

 

It was an exciting start to our series with 7 participants.

 

Among other things, we discussed following topics:

“Do templates make sense on the SAP platform? What data do you need when and in which system? Can and do you want to complement or even replace a process control system with suitable SAP components?”

 

The group was very heterogeneous in composition, so we were able to discuss with an open mind.

 

What did we learn? It quickly became clear to us that we need to focus more concretely on selected topics in future Meet-ups.

 

We continued April 8, 2022, with the second Meet-Up, “Templates in the #BreweryoftheFuture.”

 

This was one of the topics we had taken with us for discussion from the first Meet-Up. We discussed what a template is and in which cases a template can be usefully applied. Based on that, we derived the key requirements for a template for the brewing and beverage industry.

 

It was a smaller group, so we were able to discuss the topic in detail within the planned time. We would like to incorporate the results and ideas into our template for #BreweryoftheFuture. On the other hand, we also see the customers requirements, which would like to have their individual challenges integrated in addition to the processes covered in the template.

 

On May 20, 2022, we dedicated ourselves to a more general topic: “Critical success factors in software selection processes”.

 

For the #BreweryoftheFuture, every company needs custoized software support for its business processes. Standard software is the users horror nightmare, because they are usually too generic and have to be adapted to the customers individual requirements by specialists and maintained in the same way. So, we asked ourselves the following questions: What are sensible preliminary considerations before I look at tools? What options do I have to
benchmark my requirements? How do I make the decision for one or more tools?

 

There were mainly SAP experts at the start, but that what made the discussion quite exciting. We started with the discussion what software every user need, such as mail clients and image editing software, and worked our way “up” through project management software to enterprise software for business processes.

 

The remaininng question from this discussion was whether the company should require software, suggest it, or let users completely beta the decision of software selection.

 

June 24, 2022 was digitization day. And so we asked ourselves the question, “Digitization Day – is there anything to celebrate yet?”

 

Today it was a mixed group of IT experts from different divisions.

 

For #BreweryoftheFuture, we aimed to work together on which topics and assets are necessary, important and sustainable for the digitization of breweries. What are fundamental prerequisites for digitization? Where does the brewing and beverage industry currently stand and how far is it to #BreweryoftheFuture? – What are important topics on this path to have all colleagues involved?

 

Starting with the terms “digitization vs. digitalization” and the derivation of what digitization means for each of us, we thought about how business processes get to the digital world and how we take our colleagues (especially
the customer’s) with us on this journey.

 

The time had come: Our first Live Meet-Up for #BreweryoftheFuture started on July 15, 2022.

 

The goal of this Meet-Up was to have a basic understanding of the brewing process as a basis for the development of #BreweryoftheFuture. To this end, we brewed and tasted our delicious PRECOGIT Wies parallel to our discussion – beers from our partner freibier.cc were also on tap.

 

Today’s guests were IT experts and brewing specialists from our networks as well as 3 colleagues from our partner Consilio, who are working on our showcase for #drinktec 2022.

 

Together we went into (mostly) serious discussion to develop answers to the following questions:

 

– Which data points of a process step are important to the brewer?

– Which processes can be (automatically) triggered by data from the production plant?

– What is data from higher-level systems that can be helpful in production?

 

At 10 a.m. the mashing started, at 6 p.m. the fermentation tanks were filled, and some colleagues ended the day with a visit to the Regensburg Jazz Festival.

 

 

 

I was pleased to meet nice people in the Meet-ups, to see familiar faces from my professional career again and I am looking forward to interesting topics that we can discuss in further Meet-ups.