Food and Beverage

Simulation in the food and drink sector

The world’s most successful food and drink producers work with simulation software to get capital investment right, first time. Our expertise is already helping major companies to deliver new facilities, and activate change in manufacturing, storage and quality control, as they evolve their operations in order to meet future demand, and maintain momentum despite the challenges of the industry.

The food and drink sector faces a continual stream of product and manufacturing challenges. The combination of seasonal demand patterns, high product turnover and new trends such as multi-variety packs, increase the demands on manufacturing facilities and challenges engineering departments. Where site consolidation, supply chain management and automation require new innovation, our technology and expertise can make an early impact.

Make decisions with vision, invest right first time

With capital investment running into millions of pounds for new or replacement facilities, it is imperative to ensure they will meet the current and future needs of the organisation. Simulation provides the opportunity to discover the most cost-effective means of achieving a particular goal, without suffering huge cost, lengthy down time, and losing pace through trial-and-error.

‘What-ifs’ can be performed to compare alternative scenarios, and identify the best balance between performance and capital expenditure.

Performance may involve maximising throughput, optimising the utilisation of bottleneck assets, minimising WIP - or a combination of these criteria. Simulation enables all business cases for change to be reinforced through a proven methodology; solid proof of the benefits can captured, and demonstrated.

To manage these challenges, and to ensure that the proposals are fully validated so that changes are right - first time - leading food and drink companies are routinely applying simulation to internal projects, and use our services and expertise to help them achieve their ambitions while reducing cost, and capturing confirmation of best practice and performance.

Our Services, your applications

Our Simulation services and expertise have already made a tangible difference to major companies in the food and drink sector:

Capital Avoidance

A major UK brewery saved £1m by proving that the return on investment in an additional filter was negligible provided that the beer tanks were sized correctly.

Capital Justification

An international confectionery manufacturer proved that a proposed multi-million pound upgrade of their depositing process would significantly reduce unit costs and increase margin.

Proof of Concept

The expansion of a salad factory was validated to ensure that the proposed chill stores would meet peak production demands.

Capturing complexity and efficiency, through simulation

With packaging lines costing millions of pounds, and an increasingly competitive market for contract packaging - there is a clear need to maximise return by finding maximum efficiency, as well managing complex operations.

Our people understand your challenges

We understand the intricacy that exists on modern packaging lines and SKUs, that are made up from unique combinations of products, processes, and primary and secondary packaging formats.

The difficulty of ensuring that the line is designed to maximise production and efficiency, is amplified when there are many different packaging formats together with frequent changeovers.

If the design of the line isn’t seamless - stoppages have an impact on performance, and the overall efficiency of the facility may be significantly degraded. The waste and downtime that results, can be costly and threaten viability, where operators find themselves unable to compete in a competitive sector.

We help our clients to achieve seamless line designs capable of handling the complexity that modern assembly demands, and deliver an efficient facility.

Our people understand your challenges

Simulate seamless line design, implement the results

Simulation offers a low-cost, risk-free environment to achieve efficiency and complexity, by modelling, observing and capturing seamless line design and efficient staffing, which will allow them to avoid the costs endured through increased waste and lower productivity.

Our simulation solutions are a vital resource for Manufacturing clients looking to secure operations that synchronise seamless line design and efficient workforce management, with without disrupting their operations, or enduring costly trial and error on live lines.

Our Simulation Solutions provide clients with the opportunity to:

  • Trial and observe numerous line designs, and find a way to utilise equipment most effectively.
  • Simultaneously test staffing patterns and the movement and placement of personnel in their facility.
  • Gain a holistic view of operational effectiveness, every time a change is made to line design, or personnel.
  •  Identify the right levels of accumulation between machines, and ensure that minor stoppages don’t interfere with operations upstream and downstream.
  • Test multiple machine speed combinations – to find combinations that help a line to achieve a flaw-free flow.
  • the most effective V-curve design, to ensure bottleneck assets are neither starved of material or blocked during issues upstream and downstream.
  • Find the right blend of correct profiles of accumulation and machine speeds.
  • Provide effective flexibility - through correct common equipment sharing, allowing product-flow through multiple primary and secondary packaging modules.
  • Ensure the equipment is being fully utilised.
  • Maximize the usage of critical equipment, and the absorption of minor stops.

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