Process Industry: Discovering the Hidden Factory

If you are asked how much you produce per year and what benefits you obtain from it, you surely know how to answer immediately. However, do you keep track of the volume of losses that each of your production stoppages entails?

Although it is far from the ideal environment that we would like to face every day in the plant, factories accumulate inefficiencies that are hidden among the daily operations and that in the long run can take their toll. These inefficiencies are known as the hidden factory, which, in other words, represents the untapped capacity of the plant. For this reason, it is essential to identify and eliminate them to obtain an improvement in the entire process.

In the case of the process industry, which includes the food, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic sectors, there are several needs that, even if they vary in each particular situation, we can group into seven general challenges:

Optimization of Asset Occupancy

In the first place, to obtain maximum performance, it is common to want all the assets in the plant to be available for production as much as possible. This is achieved through:

• Improvements in planning
• Flexible manufacturing
• Digitization of the recipe and automatic sequencing of steps
• Detailed record of asset occupancy (analysis of unplanned stoppages)
• First-time production
• Maintenance optimization
• Optimization in format changes0
• Optimization of cleaning (CIP)

Traceability and Regulatory Compliance

On the other hand, complying with regulations and ensuring traceability is essential in the process industry. The good practices that help us in this case are:

• Digitization of recipes and manufacturing guides
• Automatic capture of process data and events
• Real-time monitoring of operations
• Electronic Batch Record (EBR)
• Calculation of indicators
• Data analysis capacity
• Elimination of paper

Flexible Production

The third challenge to address lies in optimizing manufacturing and managing the entire process efficiently, which will lead us to achieve flexible production in our plant. For this, we need:

• Digitization of recipes and manufacturing guides
• Automatic sequencing of steps
• Real-time monitoring
• Improvements in planning
• Secure management of product variations

Improvements in Quality Management

This point refers both to the quality management of tests in the laboratory and to the quality of the entire production process. Non-quality is unacceptable, as it entails a significant loss of competitiveness and service. We achieve this from:

• Digitization of processes (recipe) and automatic sequencing of steps
• Definition and execution of the sampling plan
• Automatic sending of instructions and other parameters
• Early alarm management
• Systems integration
• Integration of security mechanisms
• Reduction of human errors

Optimization of Energy Resources

With increasing costs associated with the consumption of energy resources, the optimization of these resources is increasingly necessary. This fifth challenge requires:

• Optimizations of the management of general services
• Process optimization
• First-time production
• Optimization of cleaning (CIP)
• Maintenance optimization

Reduction of Engineering Costs

The demand for changes at the engineering level is increasing, so there is no other option than to seek the reduction of engineering costs. And yes, there are also ways that bring us closer to this goal:

• Definition of new production recipes without the need to program
• Expand the capabilities and flexibility of the installation by optimizing reengineering
• Use open and interoperable systems
• Advanced and certified training of the engineering team

Fix the Knowledge to the Company

Finally, employees are increasingly subjected to more changes and challenges, so it is vitally important to fix the knowledge in the organization and facilitate access to employees. How?

• Digitization of manufacturing guides
• Centralized documentation
• Promote cooperation between employees
• Provide mobile devices to employees
• Alarms and events based on conditions

From Becolve Digital we help you deploy technological solutions that will make you unstoppable in the face of these challenges, in addition to allowing you to obtain operational excellence and access other improvements. According to the particularities of your organization, we put at your disposal the tools that best suit your needs.

With this article, we introduce a chain of publications in which we will go into more detail regarding each of the challenges described and how to face them with the appropriate tools. Stay up to date and follow us on this path!