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DrinkSoft Installed at a Leading Soft Drink Bottler in Sweden
DrinkSoft Installed at a Leading Soft Drink Bottling Plant in Sweden
Tel Aviv, October 15, 1999 – PRODAC Systems Ltd. announced the successful installation of the DrinkSoft beverage production management system at a leading soft drink bottler in Sweden. Using DrinkSoft the company expertly steers operations at their multiline soft drink packaging plant towards maximum efficiency and quality. Today’s competitive beverage market is characterized by an ever growing demand for new, more complicated and higher quality beverage brands in any number of flavors and packagings, and this while competition drives prices consistently downwards. At the same time, the supply chain demands that these products be delivered in ever smaller and more frequent orders.
To dominate in this challenging environment, the company set high objectives: to optimize their production operations, to instill an environment of continuous improvement at the plant and to minimize manufacturing expenses. After a rigorous selection process, they chose the PRODAC Systems DrinkSoft beverage production management software to let them best achieve these goals.
Evaluating the system after its first year in use, the company finds that DrinkSoft has proven to be a very useful tool. Using DrinkSoft they have increased efficiency by 10 – 15% so far. “A general statement about DrinkSoft,” says one user, “ would be something like superb.”
A primary factor in this bottler’s selection of DrinkSoft was the package’s comprehensive scope, which includes production and downtime management tools as well as on-line production scheduling and quality assurance modules – in short, complete functionality for controlling the plant’s manufacturing operations. Another factor was DrinkSoft’s specialized focus on the beverage market. The system is in use at many of the leading brand soft drink and beer packaging facilities and plastic molding plants around the world.
By choosing DrinkSoft, the bottler acquired both specialized functionality designed for beverage manufacturers and access to the cumulative experience of a large bank of DrinkSoft users whose feedback continually enhance product development. “DrinkSoft gives us an information system that handles all the key areas of activity at the plant without expensive and time-consuming in-house customization projects,” reported the project manager.
The bottler’s DrinkSoft system administrator reports that the system has proven effective in tracking bottlenecks in production. Supervisors obtain from DrinkSoft all the statistics needed for daily operations, as well as for long term planning and analysis. “By focusing on the line efficiency and line utilization calculations in DrinkSoft,” he reports, “we have been able to better direct preventative maintenance activities, to balance machinery and to adjust production scheduling to improve performance and increase production throughput. We also use DrinkSoft to measure losses of raw materials, another potential means to achieve significant savings.”
Another important advantage of DrinkSoft is the integrated on-line real-time quality control module. When the QC lab technicians evaluate manual and automatic samples using DrinkSoft, they see the parameters of the manufacturing environment affecting product quality, which significantly facilitates their analyses of product quality. “In the lab we use DrinkSoft to perform the standard QC functions – sampling, SPC forms and graphs, etc.”
The installation of DrinkSoft was executed by PRODAC and their UK-based system integrators Canongate Technology in two stages over a period of a few months. As DrinkSoft is a scaleable and modular off-the-shelf package, which can be implemented either on one computer or throughout a multi-plant corporate network, the users began by running the software on the plant’s client-server PC network without automatic data inputs. Only after operators had become familiar with working procedures and after stringent acceptance testing did the system begin to collect automatic signals.
To date the system is used independently; however in future DrinkSoft may well serve as the MES layer within the bottler’s corporate enterprise-wide business information system, thereby adding significant value to the ERP system by means of the crucial dimension of on-line real time production data.
The forward thinking plant in Sweden invested in a sophisticated PLC network linking between the different machines and instruments to acquire accurate automatic data to feed to the DrinkSoft system. At various installations worldwide, DrinkSoft’s open and flexible architecture allows the system to accommodate a wide range of data acquisition applications and equipment.
Rather than collapsing under a data overload, the users were able to rely on PRODAC Systems’ strategic knowledge and experience in beverage plant operations to collect into the system only the most significant data from the machinery and plant floor personnel needed to understand and optimize manufacturing operations. The system provides plant and production managers with immediate access to crucial decision-making data; they analyze and act on that data by means of user-friendly DrinkSoft displays, graphic tools and reports. “For example, a comparison of line efficiency per product run over a period of some months indicated a clear cutoff point under which efficiency dropped drastically;” explained one Production Team Leader. “This information proved very useful for future product run planning.”
The strong commitment made by the plant to regularly train and drill line operators and lab technicians in using the system contributes decisively to the success of the implementation. On their part, the users express great satisfaction from the level of support given by PRODAC and Canongate. PRODAC recognizes the crucial importance of customer support and long-term cooperation between supplier and user for the ultimate success of every implementation. For this reason, in addition to its constant investment in software development, upgrading DrinkSoft to maintain its technological edge and broad functional coverage, PRODAC provides a wide variety of support services to help its customers get the most out of DrinkSoft. These include comprehensive support and maintenance services, development services for customized reports and modifications, user training programs and consulting services to aid users in DrinkSoft data analyses, as well as with broader aspects of managing beverage operations.
To survive and profit in today’s difficult market conditions, beverage manufacturers need powerful tools to optimize processes for maximum productivity and product quality. Using DrinkSoft, this leading bottler can isolate bottlenecks to avoid problems and identify opportunities early on to make the most of them, showing significant improvements both on the packaging line and on the bottom line. |
