Page 21 - Packaging News Magazine May-June 2020

May-June 2020 | www.packagingnews.com.au | COMPANY PROFILE
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CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW:
A cobot places boxes on a pallet.
The newly merged company has expertise in frozen foods.
Multipack factory office: The company has facilities in Western Sydney.
Multipack LJM handles a wide range of FMCG products.
“We can see the speed of the lines, measure picking compliance, and then apply mathematical verifica- tions on lines. We can then be noti- fied on exceptions before floor team even notice it,” he says.
“Qlik has an associative model, where all of these sources of data can be brought into a set of dash- boards that monitor business health and allows dicing and slicing of data at the speed of the thought.”
“We are using the full power of it because we have multiple systems: the WMS; the ERP; the payroll sys- tem; and the time and attendance system. They all come together into one decision-making tool – they are really tight and together. We have logical linking between all of them.”
Rawson says the analytics appli- cations allows managers to find anomalies, trends, and patters in datasets of their choosing, and then drill down into a granular level of data. This allows them to identify root causes of issues.
“If we see that our production plan has a big variance in a specific period, we can drill down into the conditions that led to the variance like short supply of material or machine breakdown, et cetera.”
Rawson says there is no limit to what be done with data, which can be from virtually anywhere.
“We can even pull up weather conditions data and find correla- tions with sick leave or absences to better forecast production and enhance productivity.”
The tech team closely monitors all the checks and question what expe- rienced users, such as Rawson, are doing on daily basis. The team then configures the system to do the same checks automatically and notify rel- evant users of any exceptions.
“We don’t want to have a break- down in the process when someone goes on vacation,” Rawson says.
“We’re tech heads in this com- pany, we love tech, we want Multipack LJM to be the McDonald’s of packing industry.”
FURTHER INNOVATION
Innovation doesn’t stop at the data. Rawson says Multipack LJM is working with some of its customers’ third-party logistics suppliers (3PLs) to run co-packing lines in the 3PLs’ warehouses.
“We see this as a growing, excit- ing model,” he says. “It can help reduce our carbon footprint. They don’t have to ship me goods, and I don’t have to ship them back.”
“We’re now in three facilities here in New South Wales – in one, we have a temperature-controlled hygienic room to pack pharmaceu- ticals, as well as an ambient room to pack household products.”
“We don’t need a lot of space; if you look at our warehouse here, only about 25 per cent of the floor space is production, the rest is warehouse. We only need a small space for the packing.”
“We see this as a growing trend, I’d like to have more 3PL sites,” Rawson says.
Multipack LJM is looking at a busy future as one of the major co- packers on Australia’s east coast. With its astute use of technology and resources, that future is looking not just busy, but bright as well. ■
A successful merger would be when one plus one equals three. I’m proud to say that after 10 months, one plus one is equal to three-plus.”
— Adam Rawson