Waste Management

Operations management of a chocolate products factory realized that amounts of generated waste becomes a serious issue in their facility. Process was organized as multiple work centers connected by different transport systems, a mixture of conveyors and carts. Waste was generated in multiple places, and in order to prevent production stops it was handled quickly, removed from the production area and piled aside. Eventually, shift reports contained the correct weight of the waste, but information where it was generated was lost.

Operations management invested in optical counters systems for conveyors, and applied label tracking on cart transports. Newly generated information was feeded into the existing MES system which could easily relate it to actual production, and based on precise material throughputs generate exact waste reports pinpointing critical places. 

This information was further put in relation to BoM and recorded process parameters (humidity, temperatures and processing speeds) in order to find the root cause of material loss.