Replacement programme puts the circular economy into practice

Sustainable and efficient: Under the group’s replacement programme, Krones Lifecycle Service (LCS) directly replaces defective assemblies or those in need of overhaul with existing, fully reconditioned components. That ensures responsible and efficient use of resources – meaning the individual constituents of the machine parts – and brings the circular economy to the factory floor. 

Replacement process in detail  

The replacement programme works as follows: First the assembly in need of repair is removed from the line and sent to one of Krones’ production facilities for an overhaul. The ingenious bit here is that under the programme the customer buys an equivalent, fully reconditioned assembly from Krones’ stocks, which a service technician directly installs in the machine on site, using the plug-and-play model. That offers the huge advantage of reducing machine downtimes and minimising production losses. What’s more, customers are not tied to an on-site overhaul but can pick a time for assembly replacement that fits in with their production operations, thus ensuring a high level of flexibility. 

About ten assemblies from filling, labelling and inspection technology are at present suitable for the replacement programme – and Krones is continually scaling up the options available. For all other components, either an overhaul of the customer’s assembly in the Krones plant followed by its re-installation in the original machine or an on-site overhaul directly at the customer’s facility makes perfect sense. The important thing in all three cases is this: Carrying out preventive maintenance on assemblies with replacements installed in their place ensures the line’s technical availability in the long term and minimises the risk of unplanned standstills. 

Not just fast but cost-efficient and sustainable as well 

But back to the replacement programme – it’s definitely a worthwhile option for any beverage company, not least in financial terms. Since the prices we quote for overhauls are usually substantially lower than the cost of an equivalent new component, customers can save up to 50 per cent with a replacement, depending on the product in question. Yet another ingenious side effect: The programme makes sure that spare parts even for relatively old machines can still be obtained because the components are kept in a loop, so they are always available as fully reconditioned parts. 

A further major benefit is that the replacement programme actively supports the circular-economy concept. That is because once it has been removed from the customer’s machine, the component in need of overhaul is sent to Krones where it is gutted, cleaned, measured and repaired. After it has passed a quality test, it can be stored in our warehouse as a fully reconditioned assembly and is now once again available for the next replacement job at another customer. In that sense, we are closing the loop. 

And the replacement programme fully aligns with the Krones vision as well because reconditioning components instead of simply throwing them away saves valuable material resources. Together with its customers, Krones thus makes a crucial contribution towards designing and implementing production processes geared to overall sustainability.