Alliance aims to improve productivity in food and drink sector

Global plant operational consultancy, Kepner-Tregoe (KT), said that it has teamed up with OptimumFX, a European supplier of productivity analysis software so that it can identify and prioritise the most pressing concerns in food and beverage production plants and plan for their effective resolution.

Drew Marshall, chief innovation officer with Kepner-Tregoe, said that KT’s ability to develop workforce skills and resolve business issues coupled with the LineView and MachineView technology from OptimumFX will enhance the team’s ability to deliver and embed positive operational change and maximize customer return on investment (ROI).

He said that the OptimumFX team is capable of designing and developing a system suitable for any manufacturing process, which can be hooked up to existing programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and the software configured to suit.

Real-time monitoring​

Marshall claims that the result is monitoring and analysis of data in real-time as the LineView system focuses the client on the priorities and real savings:

“LineView and MachineView systems maximize Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)​rapidly. ​

“The data tell us where we need to focus and KT processes enable us to apply the data effectively to identify root cause, identify or design an appropriate fix, and manage the risk associated with its implementation,” ​he said.

Low OEE​

Marshall told FoodProductionDaily.com that the single biggest contributing factor to productivity loss is low OEE and that one of the primary goals of OEE improvement is the elimination of the Six Big Losses which are: breakdowns; set-up and adjustments resulting in downtime; small stops; reduced speeds; start-up rejects and production rejects:

“LineView is designed to address the Six Big Losses by a focus on manufacturing operations based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC),” ​says Marshall. “Every organisation has - at any given point in time - at least one constraint which limits the system's performance relative to its goal. ​

“These constraints can be broadly classified as either an internal constraint or a market constraint. In order to manage the performance of the system, the constraint must be identified and managed correctly. Over time the constraint may change and the analysis starts anew.”​

Holistic approach​

According to Marshall, a holistic approach to a production line’s operation is crucial for raising OEE.

“It is very easy to be distracted by the tyranny of the urgent – a piece of equipment goes down and we pull resources to get it back up and running. But​​that may actually be distracting attention from the one bottleneck piece of equipment that requires operational improvement. ​

“It is the loss of up-time on the bottleneck equipment, often in quiet small increments, that can play havoc with OEE over time and add up to huge productivity losses,”​ claims Marshall.

Equipment safety ​

In his opinion, improving equipment safety in a processing plant can result in cost savings for manufacturers provided safety training is provided in parallel:

“​It is often more the case that people working on equipment have been inadequately trained for the technical aspects of their work rather than a situation where the machinery in processing plants is inherently dangerous. ​

“​Equipment is one part of the overall safety picture​,”​ said Marshall.​

The alliance is currently aimed at existing KT and OptimumFX food and beverage manufacturing customers in Europe and Australia, according to a statement from the two companies. However, they said that longer term plans include support programmes for US processors.