PRODAC-DRINKSOFT:
Cost-effective management decision support

PRODAC beverage packaging management decision-support systems answer the need for timely management-oriented data about production, throughputs and quality control, says Brian Taylor of Canongate Technology. They are specially designed to bridge the gap between real-time monitoring systems - that provide factory floor data - and mainframe logistics and scheduling programs.

Prodac was developed at the Central Bottling Co of Israel, a Coca-Cola franchise, and reflects their accumulated experience in bottling plant management. Initial versions of the system paid for themselves in less than a year, cut costs and improved quality. PRODAC has since been developed into an open, customisable system and installed in plants around the world.

Bridging the gap

Line monitoring systems give factory floor personnel on-line information about current throughput and machine status. These data by themselves are not meaningful to management without information about inventories, product tree, QC, logistics and marketing, that are generally managed in separate off-line system. The need for such data in real-time becomes increasingly critical in the beverage bottling industries, as modern facilities increase production rates and Just-in-Time planning policies require increasing optimisation of schedules and resources.

Managers need to monitor actual throughput to make sure it follows the plant, to track production yields, losses and machine status and interpret these data with management data, such as standards, product and packaging, performance histories, QC data and finite scheduling. The data must be "actionable". All concerned managers need to see the data as they are collected and analysed in real-time during the shift or run. Long term analyses and policy decisions, as well as ISO-9000 standards, require a method of retrieving quality histories, trading runs and batches and assessing the effects of corrective action over long periods.

Older recording systems for maintenance throughput, QC and performance, that depend on manual log books and generation of reports after the fact, are clearly inadequate, because they cannot handle the volume of data that is involved, and cannot provide answers in real time.

PRODAC integrates line sensor data, configuration data and user-inputs to give meaningful, intuitive displays showing counts in cases, yields in percentages, and correlated machine performance in real-time. Detailed histories and reports facilitate analyses. Everyone gets the production information they need in a user-friendly MS "Windows" environment.

The system handles soft drinks, beer or spirits, water, juice of milk in bottles, cans aseptic cartons or plastic containers. It exchanges data with other plant logistics systems, so it can provide a complete CIM solution.

Layered architecture

PRODAC has built a layered architecture around conventional line monitoring systems. A basic substrate acquires data from the line using SCADA tool drivers. An integration layer maps raw counts and events from the line to information about products, runs, packaging, shifts and standards, organising data so it is meaningful for production management. The data are made available to the line monitor in real-time and archived to provide long-term detailed histories.

A layer of management software presents data in meaningful and manageable ways, so that each level of management gets the information they need, when they need it.

Ready to use but customisable

Experience with data acquisition and management packages shows that they are just tools that provide a starting point. The expense and risk in making a viable system comes from trying to define how to put the tools to work. On the other hand, it is unlikely that any standardised, closed system will be suitable for any particular plant without customisation and alterations.

PRODAC provides a system that is ready to use with minimal configuration, carried out by the vendor and knows how to handle beverage industry production models. But its open architecture features allow users to customise reports, use different report generators, exchange information with other systems or "graft" PRODAC on to existing monitoring software.

Coverage and functionality

PRODAC covers virtually all aspects of production management: performance, yields, throughputs, maintenance, scheduling and plant-wide utilities. The emphasis is on integration of data and intuitive, graphic presentation. Monitor screens like the one in help line supervisors see what is happening on the line. The menu-driven Line Supervisor Log accepts reports of product changeover, breaks and reasons for non-production, depending on the installed options.

Intuitive displays help visualise plant operations. The system's information centre gives managers quick and easy access to all installed PRODAC facilities.

The Plant Status screen displays current throughputs and status of all lines at a glance. PRODAC integrates planning information with real-time throughput data to forecast if a run will finish on schedule or will be early or late. The forecast is shown in a colour coded display in the Plant Status screen. Production view screens allow managers to see details of what is happening now, and scroll through history and recreate the status of the plant at any time in the past.

Reports give managers hard copy reports and graphs of all data. The Pareto chart is in part of the downtime tracking package, showing frequencies of machine and line stoppage events according to their causes.

The Quality Control Package allows integration of both automatic sensor data and manual QC inputs with production data. This allows managers to trace problem runs and problem products, and to see the relation between QC problems and machine stoppages in graphs like the one in.

Benefits

The key measure of PRODAC's success is that the systems help save money. The following are typical savings reported by customers:

• Efficiency increases up to 11%
• Line utilisation increases as much as 4.0%
• Raw material yields improve by as much as 1%
• Losses are cut 25 to 40%

At one Coca Cola botling plant production reporting now relies on PRODAC exclusively. After less than a year, the MIS manager noted better efficiency and less rejects and reported, "...we have saved so far about $380,00..besides the saving of about 330 hours per year previously spent to collect, analyse and key-in the data..."

The gains at the plant are due to the unique combination of features offered by the system.

• Immediacy - timely information about "acute" events on the line, such as bad QC, helped detect and solve these problems, saving an average of about $7,000 per incident.
• Feedback - factory floor personnel, as well as managers get immediate feedback, in meaningful terms, that helps motivate improvement. They can see the number of cases produced, percentages of efficiency and yields, rather than raw counts.
• Dissemination of Information - everyone can see management data, so everyone becomes involved in quality and management issues. The common knowledge-base makes it easier to discuss problems and understand their causes. PRODAC formed the basis of quality circle programs in several plants.
• Histories - PRODAC shows managers long-term histories in intuitive and meaningful ways, helping them to find and solve chronic problems such as excessive losses due to incorrect line balance, that were costing as much as $60,000 per line.
• Integrated Scheduling - this facility helps rationalise scheduling policies, and on-line forecasting made possible flexible scheduling that takes into account merging problems and opportunities to make the best use of resources.
• Synergy - perhaps the most important reason for the gains were the "intangible" changes produced by the system. According to Central Bottling Co's plant manager Itzehak Tamir: with the system's accelerated implementation of ISO 9000 and TWM "...the whole working environment is changed. Managers at all levels claim that the system permits greater 'visibility' which yields increased attention to production."