Häcker Küchen GmbH & Co KG, based in Rödinghausen in East Westphalia, is one of Germany's leading kitchen manufacturers. Founded in 1898, the family-owned company operates five state-of-the-art production sites with a total area of over 223,000 m². Around 1,000 individually manufactured fitted kitchens are produced there every day for various international markets.
Häcker Küchen’s Plant 5 construction project included facing the challenge of holistically networking a large number of technical trades from the outset. The company wanted to be able to control the building and system technology, energy flows, and production interfaces across the entire site centrally and transparently. The aim was to merge different systems and data sources into a standardized platform. At the same time, the solution had to be scalable and allow for future extensions. The company also wanted a system that was simple to use by various different user groups based on their roles during ongoing production operations.
With the IoT-based Emalytics building management system, a standardized central platform was created to monitor and control all the different technical trades. Building data, energy data, and selected production data are standardized and brought together to provide a transparent overall view of the site. The project involved the integration of more than 90 automation stations, around 5,000 data points, and 13 operating panels into a common building automation system.
Emalytics acts as a central control center for the intelligent networking of power generation, power distribution, and technical building equipment. Different systems and data sources are standardized, merged together, and clearly visualized. In total, several thousand data points from all trades flow into a uniform management and visualization platform.
The backbone of the solution is formed by the IoT-based ILC 2x50 BI building controllers, which perform control, regulation, and communication tasks. They connect a range of trades via standardized protocols and ensure consistent data communication with Emalytics. More than 90 automation stations of this series are in use at the site.
The modular automation architecture is designed for growth and future extensions. New systems, trades, and additional locations can be integrated seamlessly – both in new construction projects and in subsequent retrofits. The structure set up in this project, with thousands of data points, provides a robust and future-proof basis for this.
With the solution developed by Phoenix Contact, Häcker Küchen has established a scalable platform for efficient and sustainable operations in Plant 5. Emalytics and the ILC 2050 BI controllers ensure transparency across all trades and make complex structures manageable. The modular architecture also makes it possible to modernize existing plants step by step as part of retrofit projects.
