Process manufacturing is common in food and beverage, pharmaceutical and consumer packed goods. In process manufacturing ingredients and recipes are important as opposed to bills of materials in discrete manufacturing.

Process facilities will usually consist of two phases; formulation and packaging.

In the formulation process the control and monitoring of the process is critical. When the formulation has been produced the packaging of this into the desired containers needs to be achieved in an efficient, cost-effective manner. These two distinct phases need to be coordinated to ensure raw material isn’t wasted in the process. A breakdown on the packaging line may result in a complete formulation being scrapped.

Gemba’s Modular GAIN4 solution addresses Discrete production problems with the following features :

• Monitoring and recording of batch production (GAIN4 Advanced reporting)
• Packaging improvements through line optimization (GAIN4 Efficiency)
• Real time monitoring of downtimes and efficiency (OEE) (GAIN4 Efficiency)
• Planning production to coordinate process and packaging operations (GAIN4 Planning)
• Calls for maintenance when packaging machines stop requiring help (GAIN4 Alerts)
• Recording of in process quality checks (GAIN4 Quality)
• Analysis of production bottlenecks (GAIN4 Advanced reporting)
• Display of daily production targets to the packaging hall (GAIN4 Andon)
• Recording of labour usage for each line and batch run (GAIN Labour)

 
Benefits:

• Removes paperwork from the production process by directly recording critical process parameters for traceability records
• Increasing packaging line capacity by identifying reworks, bottlenecks and poor efficiency levels in real-time and historically
• Delivers coordinated production plans to the process and packaging facilities by aligning ERP production plans with production restrictions and real performance levels
• Reduces the time operations have to wait to restart production after a failure by notifying maintenance staff by email and text
• Allows lines to be balanced by identifying bottlenecks in the production process
• Drive shift performance by displaying real-time conformance figures to planned daily targets