New brewery scalability, cyber security solution debuted at #CBC2016

Attendees at the Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America in Philadelphia last week were made privy to the unveiling of revolutionary new technology aimed at allowing craft brewers to scale up or down incrementally and securely. The new smart technology was presented by aizoOn USA (pronounced: “eyes on”), a software development firm based in Lewiston, Maine, that’s garnering national attention for its work in cyber security and smart factory design.

AizoOn’s innovative design focuses on overcoming two areas of vulnerability for craft brewers: the ability to grow and the need for cyber security. The scalability issue can be expensive to address.

“Traditionally, a brewery sizes its machinery for a target volume of yearly production, adjusting labor shifts, working days per week and working weeks per year to accommodate demand. This puts a strain on human capital, and there’s limited flexibility,” said Rob Dolci, president of aizoOn USA. “At some point the brewer needs to make a large capital investment for a superior scale of production — a venture likely to take years to pay for itself. Our system, developed in partnership with brewery experts Simatec, can go from 5 bbls to 80 bbls, ultimately allowing for a production of up to 200,000 bbls.”

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In addition, the aizoOn system addresses security — a threat that most brewers are ill equipped to fight.

“The threat is real,” said Dolci. “The potential exists for copying recipes and worse, manipulating them to compromise quality or productivity. Most computers and networks in brewhouses and distribution centers tend to be older and are rarely, if ever, ‘patched’ like most office computers and servers. State-of-the-art isn’t good enough anymore. We have to be ahead of state-of-the-art.”