Leading Dutch Beer and Malt Producer Selects PRODAC’s MES (Manufacturing Execution System) to Increase Asset Utilization, Control Production, and Improve Efficiency, Quality Control and Traceability
Overview
Founded in 1719 in Lieshout, Netherlands, Bavaria N.V. is the second largest Dutch brewery. The company produces a range of standard, low-alcohol, and alcohol-free beers, pale lagers, and malts in various flavors. Bavaria N.V. also produces lagers for European supermarkets. Products are sold in 100 countries around the globe under a variety of brand names, including Bavaria and Hollandia, with the best-known global brand being Bavaria Premium Pils lager. Annual production is over five million hectolitres of beer, 1.5 – 2 million hectolitres of Limo/mixed drinks, and 240,000 tons of malt.
Challenge
Bavaria N.V. was interested in creating a fully automated production process that would improve efficiency by providing easily-accessible, comprehensive, real-time information. The company wanted to integrate various discrete islands of information including multiple excel sheets – and to automate manually processed forms. They needed an enhanced capability to respond quickly to events, as well as to increase asset utilization, to control production – and to improve efficiency, quality control, and raw materials traceability.
Solution
PRODAC’s MES Software was selected as the best solution to provide full coverage of all “Shop-Floor to Top-Floor” issues. An additional factor in the decision was PRODAC’s two decades of experience in the beverage industry, and the easy customization of its solution, which was designed for and installed at major beverage manufacturers (e.g., Coca Cola, Diageo, and Carlsberg). PRODAC’s advanced system – which was rapidly implemented in Bavaria N.V.’s bottling plants – is fully integrated with the company’s ERP system (SAP R/3). The system delivers automatic data acquisition and real-time management support that enables full control of production schedules and execution times, quantities, breakdown and maintenance notifications, production planning, BOM, components, counters, events, and analog signals.
Benefits
PRODAC’s MES system is fully web-based, open, intuitive, and flexible, and uses the latest Microsoft technologies. Bavaria’s entire production process is handled by PRODAC’s system, which enables rapid installation, simplified and comprehensive data acquisition, and easy operation and maintenance. Bavaria N.V. now has direct, online, real-time access to meaningful data. The implementation of PRODAC has created a totally new work culture that is focused on efficiency at every point along the process – ensuring maximized ROI for all company product lines.
Ing. Peter Korsten, Head of the Engineering Department at Bavaria N.V.: “We are very pleased with PRODAC’s solution, which has fully automated our production lines and significantly increased efficiency. We have experienced a considerable reduction in stoppage time. The real-time access to critical data has focused the company on efficiency issues, and has supplied continuous support for decision-making. The installation was done quickly and professionally, with almost no disruption of our daily activities.”