CASE STUDIES

Unette provides innovative liquid filling solutions to the beauty, healthcare, food & drink and pharmaceutical industries. Their cost-effective filling solutions are achieved by a comprehensive understanding of liquids and their behaviours. Unette’s manufacturing facility based at Nantwich in Cheshire, shares a site with their sister company Lubepak, who provide similar liquid packaging solutions to automotive applications such as grease for car gearboxes. The two facilities were originally housed within a single factory but were separated to meet the increasing demand for their products, together with the stringent requirements needed for food & beverage manufacturing.

What sets these companies apart is their state-of-the-art in-house production lines and machinery, built by their engineers. They provide unique customised solutions that deliver liquid filling with accuracy, speed and superior quality. The manufacturing lines are designed with the flexibility to quickly adapt between large-scale production and more niche contract filling. The one constant, and their differentiator is providing efficiency, scalability and delivering exceptional service, irrespective of product size.

Until a few years ago, adding production capacity usually led to further investment in product equipment and new lines. However, adhering to the strict regulatory compliance present in food manufacturing operations, necessitated a need for improving product traceability, sustainability, and operational efficiency.  This naturally set the company on the course to understand and fine tune the production process, starting with machine monitoring.

The absence of a monitoring system meant the following:

• Despite continued production demands from the growing business, growth potential was difficult to measure without a monitoring system in place.
• The number of production lines had been increased from 6 to 10 and it was Difficult to justify further investment to meet growing demand without greater depth of understanding of current production bottlenecks.
• Unette already had Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) in place. It made sense to invest in an MES.
• Line operators did not have the ability to log details of specific machine conditions in real-time.
• Each line is in a separate area and includes weighing and inspection.
• There was no easy way to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

“I was familiar with MES systems but the software I had used in a previous role was out of the budget at Unette.”

The Solution

The Intouch solution was installed and running within a few days. Marcello found the interface highly intuitive and easy to use. The fact that it could be viewed anywhere via a web browser was a game changer and provided immediate insight into the day to running of the lines.

As well as providing a centralised snapshot view of all machines, Marcelo and the Continuous Improvement team worked closely with Intouch to develop customised reports that detailed downtime events and reasons.

“Intouch was extremely quick to get up and running without a major investment in terms of time and money. The monthly fee makes the system incredibly good value for money, making it easier to justify when we consider the use and value we are getting from it.

We have a large display screen in the middle of the factory that operators can always see, and they must ensure that any machine downtime is addressed within 10 minutes otherwise meeting production targets will become at risk.”

The Intouch Monitoring solution has been in place for over two years and is deployed on 10 lines at Unette and 10 lines at Lubepak. It is also fully integrated with the companywide productions scheduling system to help ensure production monitoring and OEE are in sync with all planned production runs and that any potential issues can be dealt with more proactively and ahead of schedule whenever possible. The current plan is to roll the solution out on all other lines.

The Benefits

“Using Intouch Monitoring helped us reduce machine stoppage time by 10 minutes per machine per shift on average due to increased visibility and real-time feedback for operators.”

The overall time saving across all machines thanks to using Intouch added up to an incredible 6 to 7 hours per week overall, equating to over £50,000 in monetary terms.

Although each increase is small, the net effect has a had a positive impact on the business, both with operational staff and further along the supply chain, leading to more efficient order fulfilment and greater customer satisfaction. The platform has also helped to drive behaviours within the factory, allowing the business to become more proactive in other areas as well as production.

“We are starting an OEE project this year, and Intouch will play a major role. We hope to identify our top 3 shortage reasons and understand which specific parts to change ahead of any planned stops, therefore only replacing what is necessary.

Operators no longer have to physically visit a machine or line to see if there is a problem. Automation drives behaviour patterns. I always have the browser open on his phone and computer.”

The current deployment provides all users with the right information at the right time and in the right place, with actionable insights presented in a timely manner.

The OEE project will help to drive up yields that are typically around £25,000 per product type. Before deploying the Intouch monitoring solution OEE was manually measured at under 70%. Since then, this figure has risen to 80% and the current plan is to take it to over 90%.