Food & Beverage | Dapp
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Dapp

projects - Food & Bev­er­age

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Far-reaching change at a large Dutch beverage manufacturer Dapp

Far-reach­ing change at a large Dutch bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­er

Our client is an in­ter­na­tion­al FMCG play­er in the food & bev­er­age seg­ment. They work from a large pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tion in the Nether­lands. Pro­duc­tion runs con­tin­u­ous­ly, 24 hours a day.

An in­ter­na­tion­al audit, in which the var­i­ous pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tions were bench­marked against each other, showed that this pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tion scored rel­a­tive­ly less on the theme of ther­mal en­er­gy con­sump­tion. The ther­mal en­er­gy was and is gen­er­at­ed on site by means of gas-fired steam boil­ers. The large loss of en­er­gy turned out to be the re­sult of one of the two high-pres­sure steam pipes that turned out to be in­cor­rect­ly di­men­sioned. The line no longer matched cur­rent con­sump­tion and was too large. This re­sult­ed in con­den­sa­tion and thus led to sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy loss.

DAPP was asked to pro­vide a project man­ag­er who could solve this prob­lem. The order that was given con­cerned a com­plete de­sign of a new high-pres­sure steam pipe­line. Ad­di­tion­al pro­vi­sions were in­clud­ed in the de­sign to en­able this pipe­line and the as­so­ci­at­ed pro­duc­tion in­stal­la­tions to be taken out of op­er­a­tion in a safe man­ner if nec­es­sary. In the old sit­u­a­tion this was im­pos­si­ble: dur­ing an in­spec­tion or dur­ing main­te­nance, the en­tire pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tion had to be taken out of op­er­a­tion im­me­di­ate­ly. A rather dras­tic and ex­pen­sive course of ac­tion.

Our DAPP project man­ag­er was al­lowed to put to­geth­er his own team. It was im­por­tant to him in that choice that a po­ten­tial team mem­ber had a high de­gree of demon­stra­ble sub­ject mat­ter ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence with the sub­ject. This was im­por­tant be­cause the as­sign­ment turned out to be com­plex and the re­sult­ing risks for the pro­duc­tion in­stal­la­tion were very high. A con­trolled and man­aged tran­si­tion was a top pri­or­i­ty. Any error in the en­gi­neer­ing and dur­ing re­al­iza­tion could lead to a long-term down­time of the en­tire pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tion.

In ad­di­tion to ex­pe­ri­enced em­ploy­ees from pro­duc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing and main­te­nance, our project man­ag­er in­volved var­i­ous spe­cial­ized ex­ter­nal con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers in the project, such as from the in­spec­tion body, the 'no­ti­fied body'.

The DAPP project man­ag­er worked to­geth­er with his team, which at times con­sist­ed of as many as 25 mem­bers. What he thought was im­por­tant and want­ed to achieve with the project was the im­prove­ment of the old ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion on sev­er­al lev­els:

  • func­tion­al (im­proved con­trols, im­proved mea­sure­ments);
  • safe­ty (ap­ply­ing strength cal­cu­la­tions in the de­sign, being able to go into and out of op­er­a­tion in a con­trolled man­ner);
  • tech­ni­cal (ap­ply­ing in­no­va­tive tech­niques, in­clud­ing in the field of in­su­la­tion);
  • costs (by, among other things, choos­ing the op­ti­mal pipe­line route).

In order to achieve these ob­jec­tives, the nec­es­sary ob­sta­cles had to be re­moved, some­times lit­er­al­ly. A good ex­am­ple of this is the tran­sit that had to be made through an al­most 1 meter thick foun­da­tion floor.

Spe­cial­ists with  a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence learned a lot through the ap­pli­ca­tion of in­no­va­tive tech­niques, also un­known to them. This re­quired good team­work in which a good con­struc­tive at­mos­phere was im­por­tant. Ev­ery­one took the ut­most care to achieve the project suc­cess. There was an at­mos­phere in the project team, when the cir­cum­stances de­mand­ed it, not to be afraid to de­vi­ate from the beat­en track in order to ar­rive at the op­ti­mal so­lu­tion.

Dur­ing the re­al­iza­tion phase, pro­duc­tion was stopped twice in order to in­stall the new high-pres­sure steam pipe­line under the nec­es­sary time pres­sure. We man­aged to keep to the sched­ule and the new pipe­line has now been suc­cess­ful­ly put into op­er­a­tion. This not only makes an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to en­er­gy sav­ings, but also makes it pos­si­ble to start and shut down pro­duc­tion in­stal­la­tions in a safe and easy way. The new steam pipe­line leads to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2% sav­ings, ex­pressed in MJ/unit of prod­uct, on the total ther­mal en­er­gy con­sump­tion of the pro­duc­tion site. This doesn't seem like much, but in ab­so­lute terms it leads to sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings that pay for the in­vest­ment in 3 years. All in all, a mean­ing­ful, prof­itable and above all sus­tain­able in­vest­ment.

The ad­just­ments were also a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to carry out re­me­di­a­tion work on the in­stal­la­tion. These are often the final item in the bud­get and are often for­got­ten.

This com­plet­ed the suc­cess­ful de­liv­ery and con­trib­utes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the full sat­is­fac­tion of the client and users.

Food & Be­ve­r­a­ge

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Increasing production capacity drinking can line Dapp

In­creas­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty drink­ing can line

Our client is a man­u­fac­tur­er that de­vel­ops, pre­pares and has its own bot­tling plant with seven bot­tling lines for more than two hun­dred dif­fer­ent bot­tle types (vary­ing from stone jars, minia­ture bot­tles made of glass or PET, plas­tic con­tain­ers or drum pack­ag­ing) . After the com­mis­sion­ing of a new can­ning line, pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty fell short of ex­pec­ta­tions. Some time ago, our cus­tomer there­fore start­ed a project to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty for pack­ag­ing canned drinks. Dapp was ap­proached to lead the project by a project lead­er with demon­stra­ble knowl­edge of can lines. Pre­cise­ly be­cause of the com­bined knowl­edge of can lines and in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, the project lead­er has been able to build the line to­geth­er with the pro­duc­tion team in order to achieve the de­sired re­sult. The project lead­er also as­sist­ed the pro­duc­tion line team with ad­vice and as­sis­tance to help them run the line in­de­pen­dent­ly. The re­quired knowl­edge was in­suf­fi­cient and the line had quite a few teething prob­lems. After the re-en­gi­neer­ing, these were re­moved and a lot of time was spent on op­ti­miz­ing the line. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the line was able to suc­cess­ful­ly achieve the de­sired out­put. Ev­ery­thing be­comes liq­uid under pres­sure, a say­ing that cer­tain­ly ap­plied in this sit­u­a­tion. Pre­cise­ly be­cause of the above prob­lems, a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion start­ed from the project team with the stake­hold­ers in­volved: with the pro­duc­tion team, with man­age­ment, with sup­pli­ers and in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal ad­vi­sors. Through well-co­or­di­nat­ed joint ef­forts, we have suc­ceed­ed in grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the line from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 cans per day to 110,000 units. A sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment that ev­ery­one in­volved is jus­ti­fi­ably proud of.    After the can line project, the project lead­er was asked to act as NPI man­ag­er in re­la­tion to the can line, which sub­se­quent­ly worked in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Sales, Qual­i­ty & In­no­va­tion and Pro­duc­tion & Lo­gis­tics has been able to put more than ten new prod­ucts on the mar­ket. In the mean­time, after more than a year of in­volve­ment, the as­sign­ment of our project lead­er has been com­plet­ed. Our drinks man­u­fac­tur­er has ap­point­ed an em­ploy­ee from its own ranks who is now the pivot in the en­tire can story. Food & Be­ve­r­a­ge
Drawing up master plan for customer in food production Dapp

Draw­ing up mas­ter plan for cus­tomer in food pro­duc­tion

For a client in the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor in the Utrecht re­gion, Dapp helped to draw up, over­see and de­vel­op a mas­ter plan for a long pe­ri­od of time. The client in ques­tion asked Dapp to help after the fac­to­ry had be­come lo­gis­ti­cal­ly bogged down in sev­er­al areas. This man­i­fest­ed it­self in an au­to­mat­ic con­vey­or belt that be­came jammed be­cause the belt could no longer han­dle the pal­lets that were de­liv­ered, an over­crowd­ed out­side area with items that should ac­tu­al­ly be in­side, and a full ex­ter­nal stor­age area. The col­lab­o­ra­tion in­volved think­ing along in a crit­i­cal multi-year mas­ter plan that had to rem­e­dy these prob­lems. Over a pe­ri­od of sev­er­al months, Dapp was reg­u­lar­ly on-site to take stock of, study, ver­i­fy and dis­cuss mat­ters with the client. This 'data' was used, as it were, to solve lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lems in sev­er­al areas, name­ly: A sim­u­la­tion of the stalled con­vey­or al­lowed some op­tions to be re­li­ably worked out to bring the con­vey­or ca­pac­i­ty up to date with cur­rent and fu­ture pro­duc­tion. Ap­ply­ing a sim­u­la­tion made it easy to study dif­fer­ent al­ter­na­tives to di­rect­ly test the ef­fect of ad­just­ments. The sim­u­la­tion is re­li­able be­cause it can be test­ed against the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. This sim­u­la­tion has led to a rel­a­tive­ly small-scale so­lu­tion that pro­vides both cur­rent and fu­ture pro­duc­tion with suf­fi­cient ca­pac­i­ty. An on­site study and a data anal­y­sis, com­bined with the ex­pe­ri­ence of Dapp and the client, led to a brain­storm of ideas to solve the lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lems on site, but also in the fac­to­ry. These brain­storm­ing op­tions were sub­stan­ti­at­ed and vis­ual­ly de­vel­oped by Dapp and pre­sent­ed to the client's core team. To­geth­er, a few op­tions were se­lect­ed to be worked out in greater de­tail. Some of the op­tions are being fur­ther elab­o­rat­ed to date and should be im­ple­ment­ed to ease the client's lo­gis­tics. In ad­di­tion to the above com­po­nents, Dapp also sup­port­ed the client in cre­at­ing 2D and 3D vi­su­al­iza­tions, an­a­lyz­ing and pre­sent­ing data and act­ing as a spar­ring part­ner. Food & Be­ve­r­a­ge