GEA has launched Changeover Assist, a digital tool that simplifies product and recipe changeovers for food and beverage manufacturers operating SmartControl-enabled machinery. By providing consistent, step-by-step instructions, the application helps minimise operator errors, product waste, and unexpected downtime.
Changing products or formats is among the most challenging stages of food production. The process is made more complex by frequent staff turnover, reliance on seasonal workers, and an expanding range of products.
Changeover Assist tackles these challenges by showing operators only the instructions relevant to the changeover being performed on the machine’s display. Each action must be acknowledged before the equipment can restart, supporting reliable execution, process traceability, and consistent production standards.
For food and beverage producers, the solution provides several important benefits:
- Error-free guidance: provides multilingual instructions, supported by images and videos, at the point of operation to help new and temporary employees become productive more quickly.
- Waste reduction: helps avoid expensive errors, including missed changeover tasks and the use of incorrect packaging materials, thereby limiting food loss and material scrap.
- Centralised cloud management: integrates with GEA’s cloud-based InsightPartner platform, enabling manufacturers to create, revise, and distribute standardised changeover procedures across multiple production locations.
- Real-time alerts: includes a notification service and mobile application that deliver immediate machine warnings to designated plant personnel.
Changeover Assist is initially available for GEA PowerPak thermoforming machines and the GEA MaxiFormer drum former. A phased expansion to further equipment is planned, including the GEA OptiSlicer.
GEA developed the application at its centre of excellence in Biedenkopf-Wallau, Germany. Under a wider organisational programme, the company intends to bring together sales, service, and testing activities for its Food Solutions slicing and loading systems at the site by April 2028. The move is intended to strengthen line integration and support continued digital innovation.