Real Pet Food Company is Australia’s largest pet food manufacturer. The company has recently expanded their global footprint and has manufacturing offices in New Zealand, China and England. Their mission is to transform the way the world feeds pets.
- Disparate systems
- Lack of standardization
- Lack of data access and visibility
- Kalypso digital transformation consulting services
- FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite
- FactoryTalk® View
- Allen‑Bradley® Controllers
- PowerMonitor™
- Integrated and automated manufacturing operations
- Ability to collect, visualize and analyze data
- Improved energy management and utilization
- Standardization across global manufacturing facilities
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Disparate Systems and Lack of Data and Visibility
Daniel Baez is the analytics capabilites manager at Real Pet Food Company, Australia’s largest pet food manufacturer. Much of the company’s growth has been from acquisitions in different countries.
“As a result [of growth through acquisition], our factories had various components, and some of them were outdated. We needed more standardization across our sites,” Baez explained.
“Further, the information we obtained was disjointed and was manually collected. We needed to bring all these data sources together to give us better information to drive improvements, particularly around efficiency, reduction of waste, and product quality.”
Solution
Digital Transformation Expertise and Middleware Platform
Real Pet Food engaged Kalypso, a Rockwell Automation business, to identify a plan for meeting their goals. Kalypso specializes in digital transformation consulting, and applies Rockwell Automation offerings to drive digital transformation at customer sites.
Kalypso provided a middleware platform that connects and integrates Real Pet Food’s multiple systems and assets. The middleware platform is built on FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite. The industrial IIoT platform connects and integrates RFPs, ERP, MES, QMS, CCMS and ETL systems and provides a single source of truth for the operations and management teams.
Also included was an energy intelligence solution, built on Allen‑Bradley® Programmable Controllers and PowerMonitor™ power monitors. The solution monitors and reports on utility consumption, production quantity, and other KPIs related to energy efficiency and cost.
Once in place, Real Pet Food immediately gained the ability to collect, visualize and analyze data.
“It’s been useful to have the Kalypso team help us because we didn’t have much expertise in this area,” Baez said. “It’s very early stages for us but being able to see the contextualized information in close to real time has helped us understand the things we can focus on next to drive the most value.”
Result
Initial Insights Identify OEE and Energy Management Trends
To date, Real Pet Food has collected enough information to begin analyzing asset performance data. They plan to use this information to improve OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness).
“My role is to use all that information for machine learning and analytics that will give us even better value to predict what could come later,” Baez said.
Additionally, the company has uncovered a significant opportunity to advance their sustainability goals through a more strategic use of energy.
“The data we’ve collected has already provided insights around how we can better use our boilers and the consumption of energy across heat exchangers and our sites,” Baez explained. “That is definitely one of the elements where we’re already focusing on improvement plans.”
A Positive Employee Response
Baez notes that the employee response to the new solution has been positive.
“One of our core values is to work as a pack and there’s a culture to drive teamwork across Real Pet Food,” Baez explained. “As such, the team has been able to engage and embrace the whole solution the Kalypso team recommended. And because employees can see the benefits pretty much at their fingertips, it's given them even more impetus to embrace it.”
Published May 8, 2024
