Sep 15, 2020
About the Customer
Engineering Industries eXcellence’s Industries eXcellence team is kicking off an exciting new Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Asset Performance Management (APM) project for a leader in the Beverage Manufacturing & Distribution sector. The customer manufactures soft drinks of brands owned or licensed by one of the world's most widely-recognized beverage giants in Central America, South America and the United States. The customer is the second-largest soft drink bottler in Latin America and the third largest in the world.
The Customer’s Challenge
Currently, our customer has operations in 6 countries, with 45 production plants scattered across the North American and South American continents. Some plants are smaller, with 1 to 4 production lines, while others are much bigger, operating 8 production lines at the minimum. Regardless, it has become a lot to manage and oversee manually in terms of manufacturing assets, processes and performance. As the business continues to grow and expand, the customer has committed to investing in the digitalization of their operations.
About the Project
Given the broad scope of the customer’s digital transformation roadmap, and the different challenges that have to be addressed on their manufacturing floor, they wanted to bring in partners who had the technology, industry and implementation expertise needed to successfully deliver on their vision. This is where Siemens, Engineering Industries eXcellence and Edge2Web came in, a proven combination of industry-leading software and services for Digital Manufacturing. Once delivered, the project will be one of Siemens’ largest deployments of IIoT in Mexico to date. And as one of Siemens Digital Industries' longest-standing strategic partners and technical experts, Engineering Industries eXcellence will be leading the design, development and implementation of the customer’s multi-faceted solution.
Optimizing Operations & Paperless Manufacturing
Currently, all of the customer’s manufacturing operations are being managed manually. The heavy reliance on manual processes is risky and can lead to quality issues and costly inefficiencies on the production floor. If processes were automated, the customer could reallocate people and resources to more value-add activities for the business. Our solutions:
1. Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
Automating operations will streamline processes and increase productivity. The customer needs a Manufacturing Execution System that will monitor, control and manage all the activities, resources and work-in-progress (WIP) on their factory floor during the execution of production. The product we will deliver is Siemens Opcenter Execution Process, a leading MES designed for the specific needs and requirements of the process manufacturing sector. The system will cover their entire manufacturing value chain, from receiving incoming material to distributing produced goods, to order execution integrated with quality control, production planning and scheduling.
2. MES to ERP System Integration
The new MES will also be integrated to the customer’s existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to ensure efficiency and complete alignment between enterprise business planning and production execution.
Real-Time Performance Monitoring & Analytics
Currently, no real-time data is being tracked or available for operations during the execution of production. Performance data is being calculated manually, entered into the ERP system and compared against expectations only after production has been executed, so the customer is in the dark about their actual machine and plant performance, efficiency, utilization and energy consumption, amongst other things, until it is too late to do anything about it. There is a huge opportunity to harness the power of the data coming off the shop floor for continuous improvement. Our solutions:
1. Asset Performance Monitoring with IIoT & Cloud
The customer wants to monitor and track the performance of their assets in a reliable and consistent way. To enable this, we will network their production machines leveraging Siemens MindSphere, a leading IIoT-as-a-Service solution that enables manufacturers to connect assets, and to collect and upload asset data to the Cloud continuously and in real time.
2. OEE, KPIs & Performance Analytics
In addition to collecting asset performance data, the customer wants to be able to monitor and analyze it in real time, so they can react to issues faster, prevent bottlenecks and make smarter decisions that optimize production and minimize costs. Leveraging Edge2Web's visual app development platform that enables users to leverage asset performance data to quickly and easily build a wide range of industrial applicatitions, along with Siemens Opcenter Manufacturing Intelligence integrated with MindSphere as the source of intelligent performance data, we will develop an application that provides the customer with accurate and reliable performance analytics on the factory floor. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Machine Availability, Machine Utilization and Performance Quality, amongst others, will be available to plant and enterprise managers via dashboards and a web-based interface.
3. Energy Consumption Monitoring
The customer also wants to gain visibility into their energy consumption. Leveraging the same Manufacturing Intelligence and IIoT capabilities, we will build an application to measure and calculate energy use – electrical, water and gas – across their enterprise facilities. With access to this information in real time, the customer will be able to monitor and control how much energy they consume every shift to ensure that they are producing in a cost-efficient way. Users will be able to run both machine and plant-level reports and comparisons, in order to gain insights that help improve energy efficiency and business profitability.
Engineering’s Advantage
The integrated Smart Manufacturing and Smart Asset Performance Management solution that we will deliver for the customer will not only eliminate unreliable and inefficient manual processes on their production floor, but will enable them to continuously measure and understand the actual performance of their machines and plants, so they can address issues in real time and make better decisions for their business. As we kick off the pilot implementation at one of their flagship mega-plants in Central America, our team looks forward to the successful delivery of this truly innovative solution in the coming months. Once completed, the goal is to extend this solution to cover all 45 of the customer’s global sites in the next 5 years. This digital transformation journey is only beginning!
