Food and beverage manufacturers crave high quality, predictable output with little variance. So customers can find the treat they’re looking for, and get exactly what they want every time they take a bite or a drink. When that happens, they come back for more.

Executives, engineers, and managers know what it takes to achieve that goal. They need visibility in what’s happening on the floor. They need to maximize their machinery. They need information presented in a usable way. And they need it all to come without a huge investment in time, money, and stress.

That’s where manufacturing operations management software comes in.

Challenges

In many food and beverage production facilities, decreasing downtime and increasing quality takes months.

On the floor, islanded equipment confines visibility to local displays. Production status, logs, and KPIs are written down on whiteboards and paper. Analytics and reporting are done manually, or rely on slow, error-prone data entry.

A dwindling skilled labor pool and difficult training environment only amplify production uncertainty headaches.

Executives struggle to balance short-term profitability with long-term sustainable growth, and do it all without any real-time visibility into the causes of downtime and inefficiency. Out-of-data and imperfect data leads to slow, flawed decision-making.

What is Manufacturing Operations Management Software?

Manufacturing operations management software (MOMS) is a clear, simple platform that helps manufacturers see, improve, and report in real time. With a properly implemented MOMS system, you get full visibility into your manufacturing processes, which helps you improve your manufacturing performance in an informed way.

MOMS brings all of your machines and processes together to help you become more efficient and flexible and get to market faster. With a MOMS system, you’ll be able to quickly respond to changes in the market.

How does Manufacturing Operations Management Software help F&B operations?

MOMS helps Food & Beverage production facilities in four distinct ways: increased output, improved quality, better preventive maintenance, and connected batch processing.

Increased output

First, and most obviously, implementing MOMS helps you increase output. 

With real-time visibility, you’ll cut downtime and avoid bottlenecks. When a machine is down or underperforming, you’ll know right away. And if your MOMS system has machine and operator reporting (like Glassdome does), you’ll know exactly what happened.

That way you can quickly find out what happened and fix it for the future.

Improved quality

MOMS helps you improve the quality of your output. That leads to fewer finished products rejected for low quality, and increased customer satisfaction.

The software platform does this by aggregating and analyzing all of the data from your factory floor. Instead of relying on slow trial-and-error fixes, you can see where issues arise and fix them before your next batch. Correlation analysis also helps you confirm the degree of influence each issue and fix has on the final product.

Better preventive maintenance

MOMS helps you take better care of your machines, while using limited man-hours more efficiently.

Many factories maintain machines on a schedule, because it’s impossible to know exactly how many hours a machine has been running. Barely used machines get premature service, while hard-working tools don’t get what they need. The visibility that comes with MOMS allows for usage-based maintenance, so machines get maintained exactly when they need to be.

Visibility through time also allows you to see any performance degradation as it happens, so you can make timely small adjustments instead of late costly revamps.

Connected batch processing

Many food and beverage products are made in batches, which need to move through disconnected systems. When something goes wrong in one machine, it results in significant added cost in waste material and lost production time.

The Glassdome MOMS platform specializes in batched, continuous batched, and hybrid manufacturing processes. Our wireless connectivity and cloud-based model make it the ideal solution for a process that is disparate by nature.

MOMS in Action

Challenge

A global confectionery manufacturer wanted to improve the consistency of its products. Specifically, it wanted to minimize variability in product size and thickness.

Existing Process

Size and thickness of products was manually measured, recorded on paper, and then entered into a Quality Management System. Ambient temperature and humidity was impacting the quality and consistency of the product.

Glassdome Solution

The manufacturer deployed Glassdome to conduct real-time product sampling and excursion monitoring. We implemented real-time automatic sharing of measurement data and anomaly detection.

Results

The manufacturer saw a 69% reduction in size variability, and a 54% reduction in thickness variability.

Why Glassdome?

Of course, we don’t think you should use any old MOMS system. We think you should use Glassdome (especially if you have a batch-based manufacturing process, as we mentioned above). With Glassdome, you get:

Straightforward Deployment

Start strong, refine quickly. Get moving fast with collaborative experts, flexible drag-and-drop software, and out-of-the-box functionality.

More Data from More Machines

See everything all the time. Integrate with older and more complex machines, pull more real-time data points, and maximize downtime reporting.

Results You Can Use

Make your data work for you. Don’t settle for generic data or wait a day for reporting. Start getting better now with helpful reports, seamlessly automated.

Glassdome is clear, simple, and makes your manufacturing operations better. See for yourself on our site, or get in touch at [email protected].

Manufacturers are at an inflection point. Making things and getting them to where they need to be is far more complex than it once was. While manufacturing moves from developed countries to new frontiers, supply chains grow more and more volatile. How can modern manufacturers understand and adapt to these changes?

What’s happening to manufacturing in developed countries?

Since the late-20th century, manufacturing's share of worldwide value creation has been decreasing. According to the World Bank and OECD, the global share of manufacturing in GDP has decreased from 18.9% in 1997 to 16.6% in 2021 (see chart).

This decline in manufacturing’s importance to the global economy began in leading developed countries. Deindustrialization has been clearly evident in the United States, Europe, and Japan for some time. Recently, it has also been observed in the Four Asian Tigers – South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan – as well as in China.

In the United States, manufacturing decreased from 16.1% in 1997 to 10.7% of GDP in 2021. In South Korea it decreased from 27.6% in 1988 to 25.5% in 2021. Manufacturing’s share of GDP is falling even in major manufacturing nations like Germany, Japan, and China.

Are developed countries just “hollowing out?”

In addition to deindustrialization, much of this decline in developed countries can be attributed to offshoring, leading to a phenomenon called "hollowing out." This is when manufacturing facilities move to countries with lower labor costs, resulting in a decline in the manufacturing workforce in the original country. In a social context, it can be dangerous as middle-class jobs disappear, wealth concentration increases among the affluent, and the low-income population grows.

This isn’t a case of self-centered manufacturers looking for marginal gains on their balance sheet. The IMF notes that this decline in the manufacturing share of the overall economy is considered a natural occurrence as the entire economy develops. The fact that consumption expenditures on manufactured goods have remained relatively stable over the past few decades supports this argument.  

However, despite these factors, it is undeniable that the traditional manufacturing-centric industrial structure is undergoing a revamp, and manufacturing’s share of the developed world’s economy is decreasing. 

Supply chain challenges

The global supply chain has become historically volatile. The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), which measures the status of the global supply chain by integrating transportation cost data and other manufacturing-related indices, has fluctuated wildly in recent years. This instability is due to trade tensions between the U.S. and China, a worldwide spike in protectionism, and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global Supply Chain Pressure Index

How can the manufacturing industry strengthen its competitiveness to overcome these challenges?

Deindustrialization and global supply chain volatility are challenging the manufacturing industry. Without a system that can adapt flexibly to these shifts, the sector may face even greater crises. 

That’s why Digital Transformation is the hottest topic in manufacturing innovation. 

Digital Transformation (DX) refers to the process of introducing and operating digital technologies to develop new products and innovate existing products or operations. This includes cutting-edge tech like the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and big data solutions. Digital Transformation is designed to improve efficiency and customer experiences and create additional value through innovation and new inventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for Digital Transformation. A survey in 2020 showed that 37% of European companies and 27% of U.S. companies had not adopted digital technologies, but in 2021, 55% of European companies felt the need to adopt digital technologies due to the pandemic, and over 46% increased their investments in digital technologies.

Manufacturers have their own subset of DX: Industrial Digital Transformation (iDX). iDX is the process of addressing industrial challenges and creating new value by integrating digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data analysis, AI, and 5G throughout the entire industrial process.

iDX can be broadly organized into four categories: process innovation, product intellectualization, service enhancement, and the creation of new industries and business models.

The future

Despite its promise, Digital Transformation is not progressing as rapidly as expected. While almost all companies have started DX projects in some form or at some level, most are struggling to fully complete the initiative and embed Digital Transformation in their DNA.

Companies and governments worldwide are implementing various policies to promote the Digital Transformation of industries. In future insights, we’ll explore the DX promotion policies of different countries and regions. 

Looking to implement iDX in your factory to make it more efficient and increase visibility and productivity? Look no further. Our Manufacturing Operations platform is the best way to cut downtime and raise quality.