Business customers place demands on industrial-scale laundries: a hotel delivers hundreds of towels, sheets and service uniforms overnight. The challenges for cleaning and logistics are considerable: on delivery, everything should not only arrive at the right hotel clean, but also sorted by linen type and bundled. Kannegiesser, a supplier of laundry lines and technology from Vlotho in East Westphalia, meets these challenges with the concept of the "Smart Laundry" - the self-controlling laundry. Thanks to a central control system, the machines from the washing line to the folding machine are coordinated with each other and process the laundry fully automatically.

Mosca machines have been used here since 2012. Thanks to their full network capability, the use of common exchange formats such as JSON, the OPC UA machine communication protocol and open interfaces, the machines can be integrated into automated production lines. Scanners make it possible to detect incoming clean bundles of laundry and to strap them once or twice, depending on requirements. The simplicity of the system and the plug-and-play commissioning principle are an advantage.

Strapping machines are also used in the corrugated cardboard and paper industry, the food and beverage industry, in the newspaper and graphics industry, in the ceramics industry and in mail order, logistics and building materials companies. Mosca relies on apps such as remote monitoring interfaces (RMI), which can be used to access and control networked machines via a computer browser. If a machine does not perform as expected, Mosca can get an overview of the problem via remote maintenance. To do this, experts connect to the customer's computer, which is connected to the affected machine via LAN cable. This enables them to quickly carry out an analysis using the application already being used by the customer.

Mosca's Industry 4.0 potential does not end with the strapping machines themselves. Similar to the laundry items that are assigned to the correct pile and thus to the customer in the industrial laundry, this also happens with the strapping produced in-house. To this end, Mosca developed a system based on RFID tags in collaboration with ERP specialist PSI Automotive & Industry and the company Winckel. This allows strap material to be stored and reordered fully automatically. pb