Equipment efficiency in food manufacture
As one of the best known suppliers of breakfast cereals, the Weetabix Food Company manufactures a wide range of products at its sites in the UK under the Weetabix and “own label” brands for markets across the world.
Like many manufacturing companies, the production team at the Weetabix Corby factory is conscious of the cost to the business of production line downtime, but needed to get a “real handle” on the causes. Paperwork systems were in place, but required a considerable amount of manual effort to analyse the data collected. The company needed a way of quickly and easily collecting down time data that would provide immediate access to the analysed information.
A trial was set up using wireless enabled mobile hand held data capture units and a TQM system. This quickly produced practical analysis, which identified several opportunities that have enabled Weetabix to achieve significant operational improvements.
One of the difficulties with manually recording downtime data is the accuracy of the timings, particularly on short stops. Using a hand held computer, the line supervisor now accurately records the downtime by automatically logging the number of minutes the line is down.
The supervisor then selects a reason for the stoppage from a drop down list (or scans a barcode on the equipment that failed). This data, once recorded, is wirelessly transmitted to the Tracesoft server and becomes available for analysis.
These improvements in data capture enabled Weetabix to quickly produce reports which identified problems by product, size, content etc. and also provided a simple mechanism to measure the operational improvements that were achieved. The operations team can now easily and consistently record downtime. The system provides Weetabix with a solution that fast tracks the understanding and management of downtime problems.
The ability to quickly collate results enabled Weetabix to focus response on key pinch points. In one instance, the Tracesoft analysis lead to the replacement of suction cups on robot arms, every week instead of every month. Downtime is now almost zero.
Weetabix is now expanding the project to improve its Overall Equipment Efficiency.
Company: Tracesoft Solutions Ltd
Product: Tracesoft TQM
