A leading North American retailer wanted to embark on their digital transformation journey by automating their meat packaging plant. Digital Transformation helps organisations take on new challenges and adapt to new technologies that storm the market, giving them an edge over their competitors.
A Real Solution Requires Real Understanding
The meat production process includes many complex steps, such as managing the incoming raw materials, inventory management and planning & scheduling orders. Automation simplifies those complex processes, creating a paperless environment. This helps employees focus on their core activities, rather than doing repetitive mundane tasks.
And that’s exactly what this particular manufacturer wanted to achieve, as well as being able to streamline the production process, bringing full product traceability while adhering to regulatory standards.
For the Food & Beverage industry, end-to-end traceability is an essential tool, as it helps build trust in the quality and safety of the product. It also allows manufacturers to make claims about their products’ attributes, such as grass-fed, free-range, and humanely raised.
The retailer approached ATS Global for its domain knowledge and vast experience in the Food and Beverage industry. We specialise in system integration, industrial connectivity, digital quality solutions, and manufacturing IT services.
The Solution Approach
After a collaborative analysis, our expert team proposed a solution with ATS MeatIT. It is an MES/MOM (Manufacturing Execution System/Manufacturing Operations Management) solution, tailor-made for the meat processing industry. It brings efficiency, delivering a flawless manufacturing process by providing a single source for the data. In addition, it sends real-time updates whenever there is a requirement change and allows product tracking.
Before implementing the solution at the client’s site, the team created a simulated shop floor production line to identify and eliminate hurdles. Once the team completed the implementation, they trained the staff to become conversant with the solution and then provided 24/7 IT support.
The Results
ATS MeatIT now ensures a quality-assured First-Expired-First-Out shipping process that takes account of the meat’s short shelf life. In addition, the integration of shop-floor equipment and ERP has brought product traceability to the granular level, with the ability to trace individual cuts of meat back through every machine and process to the original carcass.
Agile technology and technical know-how were used to produce a transformative solution for this project. The team created a seamless process, from managing the incoming raw material to the shipment of the finished product.
