Big food and drink producers lap up factory software

Weetabix Food, American Beverage, Home Market Foods and Windsor Foods are all now shouting about their improvements in terms of costs and OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), achieved by empowering employees. Weetabix, for example, says that CDC Factory has helped it grow the branded side of the business, increase OEE, improve packaging and raw material yields and, most important, significantly reduce labour expenses. It says the system provides real-time visibility into detailed, actual operating metrics, including production rates, yields, utilisation and per-unit cost – which together enable quick decisions that eliminate inefficiencies and production cost overruns. “Prior to CDC Factory, we were unknowingly operating at 48% OEE,” says Paul Whitehead, plant manager at Weetabix. “Weetabix has put a team together to work on each of the causes of the factory downtime. We now have full visibility of the factory floor and have dramatically reduced production line stoppages, as well as reduced our labour and administrative costs.” It’s a similar story at American Beverage Company, part of the multi-billion dollar Dutch food group Royal Wessanen. Facing capacity constraints, an inability to meet sales orders sufficiently, and the need to drive efficiency and increase output, the company spent 15 months searching for a solution, before finding CDC Factory. Its view: the system provides the ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time to the right people, directly helping to drive change on the shop floor. “CDC Software took us through an eye-opening, three-day performance review with CDC Factory using our own data,” says Ken Janowitz, director of operations at American Beverage Corp. “We began to see and measure opportunities for performance improvement before we even purchased the software. At the end of this process, we knew, with a high degree of confidence, that CDC Factory was the solution we needed.”