Blue Cedar | This project involved inserting a new manufacturing line into an existing production environment. We worked directly for Unilever’s own manufacturing improvement projects department.As with the majority of projects, the work was kicked off with a project meeting, gathering together relevant stakeholders, in this case including the project management team, ourselves and senior members of the operational team that would ultimately run and maintain the new line. This meeting scoped out the development path for the required manuals and included agreement of the timescales required for delivery of every aspect of the project.

When we arrived on site some of the new equipment was already installed, some in the process of commissioning and some in the installation phase. It is particularly true where new systems are being integrated into an existing environment that the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) manual will need to be rewritten, at least in part, to cater for the specific application as it is integrated into the process. This was never truer than with this project where operation of the new lines needed to be adapted on site to fit in with the existing SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems.

This integration also required work within an ongoing food production environment, utilising GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) both in a practical sense, while on site, as well as within the process manuals delivered at the conclusion of the project.

Flexibility as far as we are concerned means doing what needs to be done wherever and whenever it’s needed. In this case that involved some very late nights, particularly during the system testing, where invaluable process experience was gained. This ensures that the documentation accounted for the handling of every foreseeable practical eventuality.

The final output from us for this project was a practical operator manual for the process and a series of PowerPoint presentations, which were then utilised in a training course for the operations team. Unilever continue to use the training materials to train new operators as they commence working on the new line.

«The ATS/Blue Cedar team integrated very well with the factory crews, getting immediately involved to understand our complex operation. They did this quickly and developed a user friendly training manual of good quality for our operators»
Nicholas Nixon, Process and Packaging Project Manager