Renewable energy strategies for the food & beverage industry can be quite complex and full of uncertainty. However, once the unique needs and location of a particular manufacturing site are understood then the strategy can become self-evident.
Performance Measurement
The factory consultant’s secret weapon
Factory consultants in the process industry can make a lot of money by leveraging a single high-powered tool called Virtual Cells.
The 4 project levers and how to manage them
It was a cold and miserable winter day on-site at a client’s facility in Victoria, Australia. I was staring at the consequence of a design mistake that I’d made. There was no going back, and I needed to fall on my sword and suffer the consequences. I remember standing there for a long time, trying … Read more
9 important digital twins in your process industry supply chain
There has been a lot of talk, particularly (and some would say weirdly) in politics, about Digital Twins. There seems to be an abundance of funding for digital twins as part of the Australian government’s push towards sovereign capability and manufacturing innovation in Australia. Amongst all of this, it’s unclear precisely what the funding is … Read more
The 7 most important factory performance metrics
Factories in the process industry have no shortage of metrics and targets. Sometimes its hard to see the wood from the trees in terms of the customer needs. Enablers such as safety, quality and the environment are now basic prerequisites for market entry and yet add to the metric overload. In this post we identify … Read more
The 3 prerequisites of a powerful digital twin
Digital twins are simply the digital clone of a system. A digital twin can be a spreadsheet, a CAD drawing, a sophisticated business proposal or a complex dynamic simulation. The common characteristic is that the twin is digital and it accurately depicts the behaviour of a system during the of achievement of a business goal. … Read more
Production levelling in the process industry – why bother?
Production levelling (or smoothing) is an important part of the Toyota production system. Here we show why production levelling is so important and how it is achieved in the process industry.
10 high-powered building blocks that change the way you look at your complex supply chain
Ever wish that there were simple, fundamental building blocks that could be used to represent your supply chain, no matter its complexity?
Hidden in the industrial engineering literature are 10 building blocks that can be used to clearly establish the performance of an entire supply chain.
How to create a factory performance metric that boosts productivity and changes behaviours
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is often used as the main metric for factory performance in the process industry (food & beverage, liquids, sheet goods, solid & fluid packaging operations).
However, while OEE is a good measure for independent workstations and processes, production lines in the process industry are usually made up of several workstations and processes which are all connected together, rendering the OEE metric less than ideal.
The 9 most important operational leverage points in a complex supply chain
What does your customer value? The harsh reality is that customers often don’t care if your plant is state-of-the-art. They generally don’t care if your warehousing and transportation network is cutting edge.
Usually, what they care about is how quickly products move to and through their supermarket or factory, whether the product is to specification