Beyond the Bottleneck: Optimizing Uptime in Food & Beverage Manufacturing

Downtime is not a singular issue, it's a dual challenge that comes in two forms: planned and unplanned.

• Unplanned Downtime arises from unexpected issues like equipment failures, material shortages, transportation delays, inconsistent shift schedules, leaks, spills, or poor maintenance.
• Planned Downtime, on the other hand, is accounted for in budgets and includes activities such as equipment cleaning, technology upgrades, product testing, and full-scale facility overhauls.

Combined, these two types of downtime represent a formidable challenge for food and beverage manufacturers, as staff, equipment, and resources are wasted while time ticks away. Ignoring downtime costs can have devastating effects on profitability.

For food and beverage processing plants, the financial impact of production downtime can amount to thousands of dollars—or even more—per day.

• Studies show that factories lose at least 5% of their productivity to downtime, with some facilities experiencing losses as high as 20%.
• Alarmingly, 80% of manufacturers cannot accurately calculate their downtime costs, often underestimating them by as much as 300%.

As a global food & beverage manufacturer, our customer's factory sites are spread across 60+ locations. Given the variable consumer demands and production traceability needs, they decided to roll out a global factory digital transformation plan. One of their key challenges was to address production downtime losses and fundamentally reduce downtime based on concrete data and analysis.

Our customer heavily relies on manual, paper-based systems to record and categorize downtime reasons at most of their sites. While this approach is helpful during review meetings, it is prone to human error and delays caused by manual data entry. Managers often struggle with inaccuracies and a lack of real-time insights, which hinder effective decision-making.

This is where IIoT-based downtime analysis becomes invaluable. By connecting directly to machines and capturing real-time data, manufacturers can generate precise, error-free reports and gain actionable insights without delays.

With streaming M2M connectivity, error code messages will pop up in the event center, alerting operators to process the downtime immediately. The system analyzes the start time, error codes, and end time, which are essential for managers to make further optimizations.

The production manager told us: “Production changeovers have been happening more frequently in recent years. Identifying line constraints and analyzing change over time usage has become critical for optimizing total planned downtime and maximizing overall OEE.”

Examples of line constraints include:

• Operator breaks (e.g., lunch or restroom breaks)
• Material shortages or delays
• Incorrect batch coding, leading to line stoppages
• Malfunctioning equipment, such as metal detectors
• Speed losses due to weight variations
• ….

To precisely track time usage during changeovers, we provide customers with a robust interface to label the root causes of planned downtime. The PLC will give an “IDLE” signal, and the operator will go to a web-based tablet to label the changeover reasons on top of the "IDLE" incident. This way, the manager can better understand the root cause of the IDLE time and how long it took, as well as identify opportunities for improvement.

The results were impressive and the customer provided a benefits report:

• They were able to 100% track planned and unplanned downtime logs and label the root causes of downtime for further optimization, leading to a 4-8% increase in availability immediately after implementation.
• Technical decisions are no longer made based on inaccurate paper records or the intuition of senior technicians. Operators can now learn from the analysis reports and better understand the bottlenecks as well as areas for improvement.
• Production OEE and energy consumption are also tracked by the WISE-IoTSuite system, which provides real-time production and energy analysis for users. This significantly reduces the time spent on manual data collection and paperwork.
• We have commissioned sites in China, Indonesia, South Korea, and India and we will further support our customer's sites in Europe and America with Advantech's global services.

Improving real-time data collection can significantly reduce both planned and unplanned downtime. WISE-IoTSuite offers a comprehensive solution to connect machine status, enhance efficiency, and justify OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

Key Benefits

• Real-time machine status monitoring
• Benchmarking machine efficiency against industry standards
• Identifying accessible efficiency improvements on the shop floor
• Estimating untapped revenue potential

By providing the right tools and insights, WISE-IoTSuite helps businesses transition from average to best-in-class operations. Start your digitalization journey today and eliminate the downtime that's holding you back.

• The WISE-IoT Smart Factory is designed to optimize production efficiency, ensure comprehensive equipment management, and create a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment. 
• Smart Factory / OEE, seamlessly drives the digital transformation of traditional manufacturing industries.
• Smart Factory/ FMS, iFactory Facility Management Sustainability I.App.
  
• IoTSuite, a cloud-native and low-code IoT tool platform, can assist various industries with data collection, IT/OT integration, analysis, and management.
  
• ECU-1251 Ethernet protocol gateway with EdgeLink.
  
• Advantech SKY Servers are highly configurable platforms designed to maximize compute and storage performance.