CCI × VDS Automation. From gut feeling to daily steering on data.
Downtime used to be recorded on paper. Today every day starts with a daily start-up on the VDS dashboard, at four plants in the Netherlands and Germany.
From paper fault forms to real-time steering, in their own words.
About CCI
CCI (Continental Candy Industries) is one of the largest private-label confectionery producers in north-west Europe. With more than 300 employees and four sites, the company makes vegan and allergen-free sweets, over 100,000,000 of them a week. Marten Groen runs the plant in Drachten, which works three shifts.
The situation
Downtime was recorded on paper. The next morning someone entered by hand which disruptions there had been and roughly how long they had lasted. Nobody could verify whether the times were right or whether every disruption had been noted down at all. Output, line performance and downtime causes could not be backed up with data. Every day the planner collected twenty forms and retyped them by hand: an hour and a half of work, every day.
No grip on downtime, no comparable data between lines, and no basis on which to account for the numbers.
The solution
VDS installed a recording and monitoring system on the moulding and packing lines. Each line now has a screen where operators enter downtime, reason and status directly. Sensors additionally measure how long disruptions last. Automatic alerts make sure deviations do not go unnoticed. All data comes together in a central dashboard, in real time, for everyone who needs it.
The result
Every day now starts with a daily start-up around the dashboard: what happened over the past 24 hours, why, and what are we doing about it? Planners adjust production on the basis of current line performance. The finance department now has a grip on actual output and can use it to monitor budgets and adjust cost prices in a targeted way. And because downtime causes are recorded structurally, the team can improve in a targeted way instead of putting out the same fires over and over.
The first thing the dashboard pointed to was not the machine itself, but a relatively small part of the process. Staff already knew it caused delays; how much downtime it really cost only became clear once it appeared as a cause in the dashboard. CCI solved it themselves. That is exactly how it is meant to work: VDS provides the measurement, the people in the plant decide what to tackle first.
Daily start-up based on current data from the dashboard.
Adjusting production to actual line performance.
A grip on actual output, budget and cost price.
Working structurally on causes instead of symptoms.
Thanks to the real-time data we now take the right decisions and make the right investments.
Another story from practice
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