Page 56 - Packaging News magazine Jul-Aug 2021

56 SMART FACTORY |
www.packagingnews.com.au | July-August 2021
Australian software solutions company OFS has brought to light the amount of time craft brewers spend not making beer and believes they can use better data to be more efficient on the packaging line. Jan Arreza reports.
Better data for better beer
THE Craft Brewers Benchmark Report includes key performance bench- mark data and explains why know- ing overall equipment effective- ness (OEE) can make a significant impact on a brewer’s bottom line.
The full report, which is avail- able from the OFS website, includes industry best-practice guidance for maximising OEE, availability, speed and waste reduction.
It shows that while craft brew- ers fare well in terms of speed and waste reduction, the industry average for actual time filling bottles or cans across the production line was only at 54 per cent.
“With the big overarching insights that have come in, and when you get down into more of the detail, you find unplanned downtime start to rear up, and really that is what we most need to put a microscope on,” James Magee, CEO of OFS, told PKN Packaging News.
“There are over 50 ways this can typically happen, including equip- ment problems, raw material and packaging material issues, as well as human errors. But it essentially means brewers are only producing just over half of the time the line is intended to be running, meaning less beer made at a higher cost.
“The thing about time is that you can’t physically see it. Compare that to something like waste, which if
you talk to the industry, all you hear about is yield – they all want to know about yield and waste. It is something you can actually see, so that is the big focal point.”
The data states that for every 1000 beers made, there are three minutes and 12 seconds lost to unplanned downtime on the packaging lines. It also shows the average time between stoppages on the line was 11 minutes and 48 seconds.
“It really boils down to that old saying – you can’t manage what you don’t measure – and it rings true,” says Magee.
“There are a lot of brewers at the moment focusing heavily on waste and yield, which is great, but are also missing out on a great opportunity in trying to sharpen up things like job changeovers, unplanned down- time events, and these other nasties that get in the way ultimately produc- ing the maximum number of cases of beer per shift,” he says.
ABOVE: Although craft brewers fared well in speed and waste reduction, filling bottles or cans across the production line was only at 54%.
BELOW:
James Magee, CEO of OFS, wants to see more brewers use data for efficiency gains.
“I think that gathering, using and benefitting from data and operator insights is not beyond the capabili- ties of even smaller businesses.
“There are indeed lots of measur- able and straightforward ways in which you can increase the profit- ability of your operation. It’s never been easier to capture and use data to make better decisions and improve operations, now and into the future.”
DATA FOR EFFICIENCY GAINS
Despite these interruptions, craft brewers showed they can make it fast and by barely wasting a drop – with average scores of 98.6 per cent for speed, and 99.7 per cent for waste management, though the report cau- tions that the need for speed isn’t everything, as faster runs often cause more stoppages and add to waste over time.
For a better OEE, the key message here is that craft brewers must pay particular attention to how they
“When you get down into more of the detail, you find unplanned downtime start to rear up, and really that is what we most need to put a microscope on...”