How we launched Arrius
After years of developing, adapting, and collaborating, Bühler launched Arrius – the first fully integrated grinding system for the milling industry – to the market on November 18, 2020. The completely digital approach paired with a Star Wars themed product video led to a huge echo in the industry and resulted in almost 700 customers taking part in the live launch. Now, Milling Solutions has set its sights at turning this fantastic resonance into sales at milling companies across the world.
Lukas Hofstetter, March 25, 2021
Arrius truly is a step change in the milling industry. The integrated grinding system brings many customer benefits, such as energy reduction of 10%, three times faster installation thanks to its plug-and-play system, and reduced building investments owed to its integrated design. Needless to say, an innovation of this scale requires years of careful planning and collaborating with customers to test it in real life circumstances. Stefan Birrer, Head of Business Area Milling Solutions, regards Arrius as much more than just another product introduced by the market leader. “Arrius is not just a step change in terms of its functions and customer benefits, but also in terms of how we developed it. We took our customers along on this journey and developed Arrius in close collaboration – from the first bolt to the final technology. But make no mistake; the learning curve for us was just as steep as it was for them.”
Michael Tremp, Head of Product Management and Marketing at Milling Solutions, sees many benefits beyond product development: “Arrius was launched during the Corona pandemic, which meant going digital. We created all our content and communication activities with a fully digital event in mind. Short teaser videos to get users to register for the launch on social media, newsletter campaigns, and the actual live launch ensured that the milling industry – and Bühler customers from other businesses – couldn’t miss the event.”
Bühler reached more than 400,000 users on social media, sent invitations to 30,000 contacts, generated 13,000 landing page views, and eventually attracted almost 700 external stakeholders (from customers to partners and media representatives) to join the virtual launch of Arrius. At the virtual launch, users and later Bühler colleagues got to enjoy a somewhat different product launch video, starring the actual Bühler developers of Arrius, and seasoned with a pinch of irony. But why don’t you see for yourself:
It is no surprise that the event attracted this kind of attention. This core element of a mill enters the market as the milling industry faces several commercial challenges with clients demanding ever-increasing consistency and higher product quality. In a highly price sensitive and competitive market, even the smallest deviation in production parameters goes straight to a miller’s bottom line. This is happening as food safety regulations tighten and millers report difficulty finding properly qualified and skilled staff. Addressing these challenges will require ever-greater automation. Arrius is set to play a key role as the milling industry evolves towards autonomous mills capable of self-adjustment to optimize production. Stefan Birrer puts it like this: “High-precision autonomous milling is not a luxury; it will become key to remaining successful in a tough market environment for millers.”
Customers save an entire floor and thereby building investment costs. The integrated drive of the Arrius makes all that possible.
A completely new feed module with asymmetrical inlet and screw mixes the product homogeneously and distributes the product evenly over the entire roller length.
The integrated drive, consisting of motor and gearbox, consumes up to 10% less energy. Energy is recovered mechanically with a specially developed gear.
Arrius is a perfect fit, and our people are excited about it. Arrius will enable us to deliver the best flour quality to our customers through precision milling. With Arrius, Bühler is setting a new industry standard for high-end flour milling applications.
Dan Dye,
CEO of Ardent Mills
We have a strong passion and drive for food safety, reliability, quality, and consistency. And following the development work we have done with Bühler and the tests we have run in our plants, we are very satisfied that it can deliver on these attributes.
Mike Peters,
Managing Director, Whitworth Brothers
We can only be successful when we are more innovative than our competition. That’s why we have decided to completely renovate our 200-ton swing-mill with Arrius.
Franz Rhomberg,
Managing Director, Vorarlberger Mühlen
After the official launch, Bühler opened a virtual world just for Arrius, where our colleagues virtually sat down with customers and industry experts and introduced them to the fully integrated grinding system. While personal contact cannot be replaced, customer feedback on the virtual market launch was overwhelmingly positive. Shortly after the virtual world, our team in Greece managed to convert an existing proposal of a 150 ton per day milling concept to accommodate the Arrius 2 x MRRA-8, and 2 x MRRA-4 in the process. Gerhard Navisotschnig, Head of Sales Milling Solutions and Grain Handling Central and Eastern Europe, knows the reason for this success. “The handshake is worth well over CHF 5 million, so we want to virtually shake hands with the team that made it all possible as well. A big thank you to everyone involved for following up on the lead and closing the deal so quickly.”
Michael Tremp has overseen all communication activities around Arrius, and in his new role as Head of Product Management and Marketing at Milling Solutions, will keep a strong focus on promoting Arrius in the milling industry.
Question 1: What where the biggest learnings from the digital market introduction of Arrius and what is your advice to other colleagues intending to virtually launch new products?
Michael Tremp: Launching a solution digitally is much more demanding than what we are used to. At exhibitions, people just visit you at your booth. Here, the preparation requires much more time. You really need to think about the target audience and with which message on what channel you can attract them. Also, the launch is just the first thing, the real work begins later. On an exhibition, this comes naturally; after a presentation, the sales team takes over and creates leads. In the digital environment, the processes are not yet set up. I see the biggest potential in this field. Finally, you really need a strong and diverse team to pull off a launch of this size. I cannot thank the teams of Corporate Communication and Milling Solutions Marketing enough for their efforts.
Question 3: You have been with Bühler ever since you started your apprenticeship in 2001. How has the company changed since then?
Michael Tremp: Well, I think change really is the only thing that is constant at Bühler. Over the years, I have seen the company grow, shift, adapt, and reorganize, which I believe is great and it shows how flexibly we act to realize opportunities. Last year is just a fitting example underpinning that fact. But it is also important to emphasize that despite the constant change, we have also always remained true to our core and to our values. I love that despite being a global leader and a driving force in so many areas, we are still a very down-to-earth business.
Question 2: Everyone is talking about the Star Wars themed product video, which starts with depicting us as the masters in milling, before turning into an entertaining, irony-filled short movie starring the actual team behind Arrius. Tell us how you came up with the idea.
Michael Tremp: For us it was quite clear in the beginning that we want to create something different, an eye-catcher, and that we want to include the development team in the video. For years, they have been working tirelessly to make the project a success. Then we had two options – depict them as heroes or the people they truly are. We decided to go for the latter but still the Star Wars themed idea with the Jedi stuck. So, the agency we worked with came up with the suggestion that both could be done. I am happy with the outcome. It was discussed quite controversially – some people loved it; others hated it. This is the recipe for success in a media world that is flooded with content. We need to stand out to be recognized but still be true to ourselves.
Question 4: Many Bühler customers know about the importance of digitalization in their business, yet it is a concept that is not always easy to understand. How do you sell tangible benefits of digitalization to customers?
Michael Tremp: The concept is more difficult to accept than understanding it. The Idea of autonomous driving is getting from A to B safely, at minimum time and with as little energy as possible while doing something that provides value to you or your company. SmartMill follows exactly this concept. The benefits are obvious, but changes of this magnitude are scary and need some time to be culturally accepted. On our side, we simply continue working and informing to make the benefits tangible. There are already several notable examples of how our customers were able to run their processes significantly better through added data insights.
Milling solutions has committed itself to transforming the industry. To do so, initiatives on plant-, equipment-, and automation/digitalization level have been started.
Mill E3 stands for advantages on three efficiency levels: space, time, and energy. By rethinking the entire arrangement and construction concept of a flour mill, Bühler sets new standards in cost-effective building investment and project implementation time which both can be reduced by up to 30%. Energy consumption – one of the key cost drivers of a mill – can be sustainably reduced by up to 10%.
With Arrius, Bühler has produced an integrated and self-adjusting grinding system that is a radical step change in how millers are able to control the quality and consistency of their product. It follows a completely new concept of integration and digitalization, providing the basis for energy and installation time savings as well as remote and autonomous operation of a mill.
SmartMill is Bühler’s journey to optimize yield, increase product quality, improve traceability, reduce energy consumption, and increase overall plant efficiency. We have laid a solid foundation with smart equipment (e.g., Arrius), a comprehensive automation portfolio and many digital services. The latest addition is the temperature and vibration management system (TVM), which provides millers with precise insights into the grinding process.
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