"The new lines were fully integrated horizontally (machine to machine) and vertically (Control-MES-WMS-SAP) enabling the right data to be available at the right time and eliminating manual data entry requirements during the line changeovers."

One customer faced different challenges on three packaging lines. The changeover time was higher than the actual production run time, conversions required a lot of manual intervention and paperwork. As we moved towards reducing inventory and adopting a more responsive supply chain the number of changeovers was planned to increase which would have been unworkable for the teams if they had to continue using legacy paperwork and manual processes for quality control, inventory management and changeover execution. In addition, there was no standard packaging solution. Our software teams have ensured that today there is a standard for the entire packaging line and that the work processes are fully digitised.

All recipe parameters are digitally configured and information about the necessary manual machine settings is sent to tablets. Manual sampling was replaced by historicising flow meters, QA checks were performed digitally and reports were created automatically. In the end, we managed to reduce the changeover time from 25 to only 5 minutes (including product release) by introducing several changeovers. Thanks to these improvements, our customer was able to triple the number of changeovers and double its productivity.