Tom Fox, O’Brien Fine Foods’ Production Manager, said; “Plantstats has given us a visibility and transparency that has enabled us to focus on the key areas to improve.”
O’ Brien Fine Foods is a family run business and a primary supplier of high quality meat products to the Irish Market. They pride themselves on creating high quality award winning meat products that use only 100% Irish ‘Bord Bia’ approved pork.
O’ Brien Fine Foods identified target key areas within production in an attempt to make efficiency improvements as part of their continuous improvement project. The key requirements were to create a system that could not only monitor efficiencies but enable the company to identify some specific areas to address.
Plantstats OEE and downtime software along with the checkweigher data collection modules were installed across all nine production lines. Each line was fitted with a networked Plantstats data entry keypad and 40” ceiling mounted display monitor. The display gives real-time feedback to operators on their performance across the shift.
O’ Brien Fine Foods were able to identify and target key areas to improve resulting in a significant overall efficiency gain. Real, unambiguous data has led to a focussed approach to the improvement process. The Plantstats systems highlighted areas where savings could be made, which initially were not obvious. In addition to the CI information, Plantstats is providing real time production data and collecting all weight data required for legislative and audit purposes.
“Plantstats enables us to quickly identify any issues and gives us real data to direct our improvement teams” Simon Geddis, General Manager, Avondale Foods Ltd.
Avondale Foods is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of coleslaw, wet salads, side salads, vegetable accompaniments, soups, sauces and mayonnaise to retail and food-service customers throughout Britain and Ireland.
In the first phase of the project, Avondale Foods wanted to focus on one factory and to monitor the weight performance across all lines. The system had to comply with the record keeping requirements of customers and Trading Standards but had also to give real time data to monitor performance on each line. The data would then be presented in an easy to use browser-based user interface, to focus the work of the improvement teams.
Plantstats Checkweighing software was installed on a central server and network boxes fitted to nine Sparc checkweighers. The checkweighers consisted of three different models each connected to the network and configured to send detailed data on the weight performance in real time. Users can access the data and reports on their own PCs.
Within weeks of installation Avondale Foods was able to reduce the amount of ‘give-away’ on each line, benefitting from real savings. One particular line was performing poorly but analysis of the product weight distribution and reject levels, highlighted a high weight variance due to the filling equipment and was resulting in either high rejects or high overfill. Avondale Foods were able to use the Plantstats analysis tools to identify the costs of the rejects and overfill, while the improvement team used the information to help them decide what action was required.
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Quality Control Solutions Limited, 4a Fosseway Business Park, Stratford Road, Moreton in Marsh, GL56 9NQ
Plantstats is a complete paperless data capture package that gives production data in real-time to help you manage your business. Jargon free and easy to use it has a proven track record in driving up efficiencies and driving down costs. Its modular design means users can customise Plantstats to meet their needs and gain real cost benefits.
