About
About Gross Automation
Food & Beverage Automation is a resource from Gross Automation, LLC: a family-owned industrial automation company in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
- #1 Freelance integratorThe world's number-one ABB Freelance integrator, after ABB itself.
- UL 508A panel shopIndustrial control panels designed and built in-house, in our UL 508A panel shop.
- Family-ownedFounded as an independent sales representative in 1986; a distributor and integrator for more than three decades.
What we do for processors
We deliver complete ABB Freelance distributed control systems to food, beverage, medical device and pharmaceutical producers that have outgrown PLCs, built around batch control, recipes and electronic records. One company does all three parts of the job:
- Engineering. Our engineers work on control-system projects full time. A project can start from a running plant, a machine you already have, or just an idea. Engineering → All of our engineering work →
- Panels. The control panels for those systems are built in our UL 508A panel shop in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
- Supply. The components come through our distribution business, GrossAutomation.com.
Engineering is the part people don't expect from a company best known as a distributor. Much of what our engineers design goes into products our customers sell to their own customers, and you will find control systems we designed and built everywhere from family farms to military vessels.
Why Freelance
ABB Freelance is our core process-automation platform. We have designed, delivered and supported Freelance systems for many years, and today Gross Automation is the leading Freelance integrator in the world after ABB itself. We know where Freelance fits, where it doesn't, and how to get the most from it.
This site covers Freelance in food, beverage and life-science plants. For Freelance work in other industries, see our engineering team's ABB Freelance integrator page.
Why food, beverage and life sciences
Wisconsin and the surrounding Midwest are home to one of the densest concentrations of dairy, brewing, ingredient and food processing in the country. Many of these producers are independent, mid-sized companies that have outgrown PLC-based control but don't need the cost and overhead of a large enterprise DCS. That gap is exactly what a right-sized Freelance system fills, and this site exists to share what we know about doing it well.
These plants bring requirements that general-purpose automation often misses: ISA-88 batch control, food-safety traceability, 21 CFR Part 11 electronic records, hygienic design for washdown areas, and CIP and SIP. Our knowledge library →
Visit or call
Gross Automation, LLC
3680 N 126th St, Brookfield, WI 53005, United States
+1 (262) 252-1600 · US toll-free (877) 268-3700
Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CT