Project Overview

The National Manufacturing Manager’s vision was to create a system that provided information in realtime to support the manufacturing and continuous improvement activities both locally and nationally.

He wanted to standardise performance measures and remove variations in the ways different sites were accountable. He also wanted to improve the information flows between the factory floor and management.

SAGE extended the existing plant performance system – Activplant – to create a national datawarehouse which collects data from all sites and other systems to provide a standardised national reporting platform.

The national data-warehouse connects to the SAP ERP system, the quality system and the customer feedback systems to provide the reporting required.

Technology Utilised

• CDC Activplant & Throughput Analyser
• Microsoft ASP.Net
• Microsoft SQL 2005 Database
• Microsoft SQL 2005 Integration Services
• Microsoft SQL 2005 Reporting Services
• XML, CSV, Excel
• Kepware OPC Server & ODBC Driver
• PLC; Schneider, Siemens, Square-D & Rockwell
• DotNetNuke Content Management System

Project Challenges

Complex business rules are applied to different sites, lines and products to meet the requirements of the business. Production data needed to be linked to the SAP production schedule after the run had completed.

Connecting to other systems and dealing with errors from these systems.

Project Highlights

People have started to change their behaviour to influence and improve the reported numbers. For example, Syrup Yield has improved to be nearly 100% at sites that have made that their focus.

Syrup is the major cost component in soft drink and a gain in this area makes a significant cost saving. This has raised the bar for everyone, and pressure has increased for other sites to do the same. Each site competes against the other sites to get the best numbers.