PRODUCTION SCHEDULING
Correct scheduling of production is a critical task for most of the Pasta manufacturers we work with. Plans change frequently and urgencies happen every day. Being able to adapt production scheduling to the fast changing requirements allows to guarantee efficiency and avoid lost of time, product and margins.
Excel is a great tool, but cannot support all the business requirements. A finite capacity scheduler is often too complex and expensive to implement and maintain.
For these reasons we provide a production scheduling solution easy to manage, flexible and effective to support your business.
Assign production and packaging orders
Synchronize production planning with ERP or create production and packaging orders directly in the MES system. It doesn’t matter. Basing on quantities of pasta to produce, delivery date, asset and sequence of production constrains the system propose a schedule that you can easily edit and modify. You can test several “what if” scenarios just changing some parameters and running the scheduling again. Once you are satisfied you can assign production and packaging machines, teams and more. The schedule is in real-time available to anyone needs to access it, from the line operators to the management. Real-time visibility of job progress and schedule attainment let you inform promptly your customers on the status of their orders. Information can be shared real-time with the ERP so to keep it updated and take your strategic and financial decisions in the most informed way.
Finite scheduling
Production scheduling and resource management can be optimized applying business rules. The real time information on availability of materials, machines, teams can be used to plan and assign resources to each single job in production or packaging. Maintenance plans can be taken into account during the calculation of the proposed schedule as well as changeover time and cleaning. In this way it’s possible to determine the job sequence that can optimize the production throughput. The system can leverage the first available or best performing machine to define production routes.
RECIPE MANAGEMENT
Recipes are a critical Intellectual Property for any Pasta company. Correct management of recipe versions and correct execution of batches is fundamental to guarantee the quality of the product and keep the loyalty of customers to the brand.
Raw materials change and R&D is continuously looking to create new products or optimize the existing ones to increase margins and reduce costs.
A single recipes repository for all the plants allows a perfect control of production and the real-time update of the working recipes. Actual data can be compared with the ones contained in the recipe to gain insights on the process and tune it.
For these reasons we provide an advanced recipe management solution easy to manage, flexible and effective to support your business.
Recipe management
A recipe contains the defined procedure and a mapped formula that defines the making of a product by associating a formula and capability parameters. Manual capabilities are available for manual data entry and acknowledgment.
Comprehensive history records and reporting allow users to view historical information about formulas and recipes that have been created, changed, or executed. Any change of the recipe can generate a new version. A workflow can be triggered to collect all the approvals before a recipe is released for production. Previous versions are kept for historical purposes, but cannot be used any more. The system guarantees that pasta is produces and packaged following the latest official instructions.
The Recipe management user interface can be accessed via a web browser on a desktop, or on mobile devices.
Pre-Weigh
Pasta production frequently requires micro-ingredients dosing or pasta filling preparation. Those activities need to be executed following specific steps associated with specific quantities and tolerances. The steps have to be performed in the correct order to guarantee the quality of the product. When an operator executes a pre-weigh he’s informed with all the instructions and all the operations are recorded and stored. They will be associated with the production order to the batches to guarantee the complete lot traceability.
Recipe execution
Production can be fully automated or manual. The system will send the recipe information to the production line PLCs or deliver them to the operators. If manual the recipe can be printed or accessed through a web browser using a tablet where the operator can access instructions and declare the operations done.
On automatic production lines an operator simply assigns a recipe to the appropriate line and starts, monitors, and controls its execution. All the setup parameters values can be adjusted within the defined limits, either prior to recipe start or even just before the capability is executed. In both cases they are downloaded to the PLC in a second and with guarantee of no errors. This is mostly critical for the devices of the packaging line: weigher, packer, printer, scale, boxer, labeler and palletizer. Avoiding misconfiguration of the devices allow to reduce scraps, reworks or, even worse, commercializing mipackaged or mislabeled products.
TRACEABILITY
Traceability in production is critical to protecting consumers and your brand. For regulated plants, recording, tracking, and tracing the genealogy of raw materials, Work-in-Process (WIP), and go-to-market products is essential to regulatory compliance. Of course, a traceability solution can do more than help you comply with regulations; when traceability data is available in real time, it can help you optimize the process, increase productivity and reduce costs.
Our Track & Trace solution is easy to manage, flexible and effective to support and improve your business.
Operations view
A clear and updated view of the operations is critical to be confident on product quality. The system can provide a comprehensive view of all the critical processes of your operations, including: Material Receiving; Material Location Tracking; Lot Identification; Material Consumption; Finished Goods; Product Shipping.
Provide clear information about your product
The ability to understand what ingredients comprised a product, the supplier/lot/quality/state of those ingredients, the condition of the equipment that produced the product, the process parameters that were used during production and the workforce that worked on a product/batch are essential steps to continuously guarantee a high-level of food safety and bring confidence to customers. Track and Trace functionalities can be applied to address this challenge. Information needed can be collected automatically or manually and reported to:
- Avoid product recalls and poor quality resulting in brand loss
- Comply with all regulations and governing bodies
- Reduce your business risk for regulatory requirements, increased recall effectiveness, and brand consistency
- Provide a full report of a production lot including
- the materials consumed into a product
- the full history of processes
- the equipments the product was built on
- the workers/ teams who worked on the product
- the measurements samples / test done on the product
PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT & OEE
Factories can benefit greatly from deploying lean tools. Whether you need to improve quality, eliminate waste, shorten lead-time, or reduce total cost, you’ll need insight into process performance to uncover opportunities for improvement. Manual data collection consumes scarce human resources, often is prone to human error, and delays decision-making processes.
Our solution supports Lean, Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement initiatives providing real-time analytics so you may focus on training, collaborating, and improving processes.
OEE and events management
Connecting the system to the existing automation infrastructure, allows to have a clear view of what’s happening on the shopfloor and to be informed of events requiring attention. Operators can be engaged to detail specific root causes or corrective actions, to leverage their knowledge, for performance improvement. The information can then be accessesd to have in-depth analytics by drilling down using function and time slicing methods – zoom into the root cause of line constraints. Real-time capturing and visibility of production equipment utilization, performance, and production progress brings to better performances and significant savings. Line Performance dashboard and reports can support Lean Manufacturing and Continuous Improvement practices. They provide essential information for the production, quality, and maintenance teams, such as OEE details, loss analysis, production details, stoppage causes.
GiveAway management
Managing giveaways let the plant ensure that pasta net weights meet the stated label weight minimizing the amount filled over that label weight. Our solution can help getting the filling process in statistical control. When a process is stable and predictable, and with reduced variation, it can be adjusted to run closer to the Label Claim reducing the amount of overpack.
Having weighs recorded periodically gives operators and supervisors immediate statistically-based feedback when processes shift or become unstable. This better use of real-time actionable information can have a profound impact on both risk management and material use and let the company reduce giveaways up to 40%. What’s more, the information that your team has collected for monitoring the packaging operation in real-time is a valuable corporate asset and has value long after the current batch of pasta is sealed and out the door.
Real-time data collection
Production managers need information that helps them forecast more accurately, pinpoint production issues, react promptly to any abnormal situation that requires their attention and better understand their plant performance. The system provides instant access through reports and displays for quicker decision-making. With real-time alerts, notifications, escalations, and the ability to configure automated workflows, the tools to communicate and resolve problems quickly and effectively are available.This allow to improve interactions with customers, improve quality, improve efficiency, reduce maintenance and inventory.
Workflow management
By defining workflows and tasks, you can guarantee assignments execution and gain visibility into your process improvement opportunities.Real-time workflow management and task capabilities drive product quality and business profitability, dramatically impacting productivity. The system helps to:
- Reduce wait time
- Communicate tasks
- Automate information
- Lower production costs
- Decrease waste and rework
- Improve customer satisfaction
Workflow management digitises, automates and enforces standard operating procedures. It maintains records for compliance purposes and improvement initiatives. The web-based user interface can be accessed on mobile and desktop devices eliminating paper usage, reducing errors and inefficiencies.
Metrics and reporting
Real-time KPI calculation and reporting allows to gain visibility into production operations, including status of jobs, schedule attainment, and resource performance. Information can be compared by operator, team, shift, route, supplier, lot and more to identify why “golden” runs are exceptional. Areas of the factory that are bottlenecks can be quickly determined to prioritize improvement plans. Maintenance operations, including status of work orders, on-time completion, and Response and Wrench-time to return equipment to a good running state let to identify which equipment and root causes require corrective actions to improve equipment performance.
In a multi-site deployment, our solution provides analysis to compare the performance of lines and departments across plants to determine best practices across the enterprise. Using extensive analytics, workflow engine, and dashboards, detailed user-definable reports and electronic batch records (EBRs) can be generated with ease. A complete electronic audit trail of the transactions can be available to meet FDA requirements.
Information on production operations, including status of QC tasks, failed tasks, SPC violations, process performance, and product quality trends allow to monitor QA performances and guarantee the quality of the product.
Visibility into scheduling & inventory metrics allow to improve supply chain performance and quickly determine areas of the process that require corrective action to decrease order to ship lead-times and improve on-time delivery performance.
