"Unlock the true potential of your food and beverage facility with the power of data-driven reliability - discover the three compelling reasons why!

Achieving long-term reliability of facilities requires a careful balance between the power of technology and the ingenuity of human work processes.

Food processing facilities are adopting data technology, processing techniques, and robotics to meet the demand for healthier, cheaper, and better-quality food products. The global food technology market is expected to exceed $342.5 billion by 2027.

Tech advancements can optimize workflows, reduce downtime, and minimize waste. It's vital to balance tech and human work processes for long-term reliability. Reliable equipment is key to efficiency, output, and compliance.

Data-driven reliability helps food and beverage facilities achieve equipment reliability by collecting and modeling data to make strategic business decisions.

Here are three reasons why food and beverage facilities need data-driven reliability:

1. "Technology alone cannot solve everything."

Technology has brought sophisticated solutions like automation, AI, and data analytics. However, it's not the complete answer to industry challenges. Combining technology and human intelligence is necessary to achieve optimal results.

Accurate and reliable data is crucial for successful technology. Only complete or correct data can lead to correct decisions. Collaboration with experts is critical to contextualize decisions. A data-driven approach can help incorporate the best of technology and human expertise to achieve shared objectives.

For example, one of the largest breweries in the world produces more than 500,000 gallons of product a day. Despite having some of the most advanced technology in the world, this facility loses $50 million a year in lost production due to unplanned downtime. To minimize the amount of lost production, this facility has a goal to meet an unplanned downtime target of 3%, which equates to about $24 million in increased revenue.

"For reliable operations, brewery departments must work together towards a shared goal. Using a data-driven approach will help focus on critical actions while meeting individual KPIs."

It's hard to know where to focus limited resources to achieve a goal. HSE risks resulting from equipment failure are their primary focus for the brewing facility. Other departments prioritize production loss due to equipment downtime. Adopting a data-driven approach can help identify probable failures, prioritize mitigation activities, and allocate resources efficiently.

2. Data-Driven Reliability Helps Facilities Shift to a Proactive Approach to Maintenance.

Reactive maintenance costs three to five times more expensive than proactive maintenance. A data-driven approach to reliability enables facilities to holistically approach complex problems by leveraging a combination of human expertise and technology. When relying solely on human expertise, intelligence models such as reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) or spare parts optimization can skew conservatively, wasting time and money. With data-driven reliability, facilities can adjust their plans to make more confident decisions based on live, connected data.

For example, a manufacturing facility that produces baby formula is experiencing 15% unplanned downtime and loss of containment failures, compromising production output. The site lacks a long-term reliability and maintenance plan, so about 60% of the site’s maintenance work is reactive.

3. Establishing a Data-Driven Reliability Culture Can Help Improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

A data-driven reliability culture significantly impacts Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), a metric measuring equipment performance, availability and quality. Organizations with a culture of people working toward a shared goal of reliability will experience optimized work processes, ensuring faster, more objective and higher-quality reliability decisions across all levels of the operation.

A data-driven approach to reliability can help improve OEE in three ways:

Performance

A reliability culture fosters a proactive approach to maintenance and equipment management, which leads to improved equipment performance. Facilities can reduce equipment slowdowns, breakdowns, or suboptimal performance by implementing preventive maintenance practices, proactively addressing equipment degradation, and optimizing spare parts availability. This results in higher equipment productivity and performance, positively impacting the performance component of OEE.

Availability

A reliability culture emphasizes minimizing equipment downtime and maximizing equipment availability. Facilities can reduce unexpected breakdowns and unplanned downtime by adopting preventive and predictive maintenance practices, implementing condition monitoring techniques and utilizing data-driven insights. This increases the overall availability of equipment for production activities, improving the availability component of OEE.

Quality

A reliability culture improves product quality and reduces defects. Equipment reliability is directly linked to consistent product quality. By maintaining equipment in optimal condition, identifying and addressing potential failure points, and implementing quality control measures, facilities can ensure that equipment operates within desired specifications, resulting in better product quality. This positively impacts the quality component of OEE.

Data-driven reliability culture in food and beverage facilities prioritizes equipment performance, maximizes effectiveness, and increases OEE.

Conclusion

To sustain success in the food industry, facilities require a data-driven approach that combines technology with human work processes. The expertise of individuals and the analysis of automated systems are both critical to this approach. By adopting this approach, food and beverage facilities can make informed decisions in an ever-evolving landscape.