Success Stories
Aryzta Canada Co.
Improving Quality & Production Levels with SAP MII at a Specialty Bakery Manufacturer
Company:
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- Name: Aryzta Canada Co.
- Industry: Specialty Bakery
- Location: Ontario, Canada
- Goods: Donuts, Bread, Danish Pastries & Croissants
- Implementation Partner: RTS Consulting Inc.
Objectives:
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- Gain real-time insight into production and quality trending information.
- Provide operators, planners, and managers with reliable, automated, and highly available shop-floor information using interactive role-based dashboard interfaces.
- Enable automatic production & quality reporting, eliminating the manual data aggregation process.
- Create an enterprise-wide integrated solution for production and quality control, consolidating data from disparate sources.
- Identify the most influential equipment causing downtime in real-time.
- Address quality anomalies before they occur based on trending and control limits monitoring.
SAP & RTS Solutions and Services:
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- SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII).
- RTS Quality Management Information System (RTS QMIS).
Challenges and Opportunities:
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- Improve visibility into daily and historical production and quality trends.
- Increase data transparency and accuracy for quality and production to enhance resource planning.
- Manage production downtime costs.
- Reduce dependence on manual data capturing, reporting, and analysis
- Identify when quality control limits are exceeded across the product lifecycle.
Benefits:
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- Quality improvement due to real-time visibility into quality trending.
- One system of record for production and quality management integrated with the ERP system.
- Actionable intelligence through dashboards and alerts, triggering Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA) for non-conformance issues.
- Improved uptime, increased production volume, and reduced costs through continuous monitoring of key assets.
- Automated reports to enhance reliability of planning, management, and operations.
SAP MES for the Plastic Injection Molding Industry
Industry: Plastics
Implementation Highlights:
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- Close collaboration between client and RTS
- Real-time Overall Equipment Performance visibility via Andon system
- Visual production work order MES Scheduler
- Web-based HMI Screens, integrated with PLC and SAP S4-Hana
- Ad-hoc reporting with options to export as CSV or send via email
- Scalable solution – Easily configure additional Injection Molding Presses and equipment on the fly
Challenges and Opportunities:
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- Real-time visibility and dynamic work order sequencing at the equipment level
- Identify lost production time and scrap in real time
- Optimize internal plant material logistics using Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)
- Seamless visibility to production data from S4-Hana and PLCs
- Web-based HMI Screens at workstations
- Provide operators with relevant workflow instructions and specific part drawings
Why SAP:
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- Seamless integration with SAP ERP/S4-Hana
- Interactive & uniform user-interface
- Secured role-based functionality
- Real-time, bidirectional communication with plant equipment and ERP/S4-Hana
- Web-based dashboards, available on smart mobile devices
Objectives:
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- Provide real-time insight and control over production operations at the Plant, Line, and Equipment levels
- Increase equipment utilization via Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
- Automatic production reporting back to SAP S4-Hana
- Equip operators, planners, and managers with accurate, real-time information through interactive dashboards
- Create a data repository for Injection Molding Machines’ configuration, Mold maintenance management, and machine history
Benefits:
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- Improved planning and production order management
- Quick access to operational data
- Real-time Plant-level KPIs
- Real-time monitoring of equipment and production parameters, enabling faster maintenance response
- Streamlined production label printing
- Mold maintenance with validation during assignments
- A single web-enabled HMI Screen displaying real-time data from PLC and master data from SAP S4-Hana
Overview
The SAP MII solution bridges the gap between the plant floor and the enterprise business system, enabling manufacturers to respond dynamically to unpredictable changes while ensuring efficient supply chain replenishment. RTS Consulting Automation delivered an industry-specific MES solution for the plastic injection molding sector, designed to improve production efficiency, equipment utilization, and provide valuable shop floor KPIs.
Key Solutions:
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- Mold Maintenance
- Traceability
- Real-time visibility to the plant floor
- Improved visibility into production data
- Enhanced product quality
Machine Availability & KPIs
The Andon dashboard provides real-time visibility into machine schedules, indicating the current cycle time for each work center. Supervisors can monitor the plant’s overall status from a single dashboard and drill down to specific equipment to take corrective action if necessary.
Visual Order Schedule Planner
Orders are downloaded from SAP S4-Hana and displayed in a searchable table. The visual schedule planner provides a graphical illustration of the schedule, enabling plant managers to plan, coordinate, and track orders easily. Orders can be rescheduled or reassigned by simply dragging and dropping them within the planner.
Reports
The solution provides ad-hoc reports highlighting problem areas such as downtime and scrap through Pareto charts and reason codes. Other reports include Color Change, Efficiency, Open Orders, Production, and Tooling Reports. Reports can be exported as CSV or sent via email.
Web-Enabled HMI Dashboards
SAP UI5-based HMI Screens are web-enabled and touch-ready, connecting to injection molding machines, PLCs, and SAP S4-Hana. These screens display real-time data from multiple entities and allow immediate confirmations back to S4-Hana.
Real-Time Order and Quality Status
The system monitors over two million combinations of product and production parameters, generating intelligent alerts and easy-to-manage reports. This ensures real-time visibility into orders and quality issues, enabling quick corrective action and minimizing production impact.
Mold Maintenance
The Mold Maintenance feature ensures proactive maintenance scheduling, improving tool longevity and product quality. Operators and planners are notified of potential mold issues during scheduling, preventing the use of unhealthy molds.
Summary
The SAP MII MES solution for the plastics industry provides real-time visibility, streamlines the planning process, enhances product quality, and improves production flexibility and agility. By enabling integration with SAP ERP/S4-Hana and shop floor PLCs, the solution provides end-to-end production management and quality control.
For more information, please contact:
Vic Briccardi, Partner
RTS Consulting – Automation
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.rtsperfectplant.com
A world-class resin and synthetic rubber manufacturer headquartered in North America was facing significant challenges in managing and printing their Right to Know (RTK) and product-specific labels. Before partnering with RTS Consulting (RTS), the customer manually extracted data from multiple subsystems and ERP systems to design and print product labels. Despite their efforts, the manual system resulted in frequent errors, delays, and shipping issues, leading to:
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- Increased customer complaints
- Longer delivery times
- Product recalls and transportation costs
- Decreased sales due to non-compliance with customer label requirements
- Traceability
After evaluating the costs of these issues, the customer selected RTS to implement a streamlined and effective solution.
SAP MII-Based Label Printing Solution
After a comprehensive analysis and blueprinting session, RTS Consulting proposed an automated labeling solutionusing SAP MII. This solution leverages SAP MII’s native connectivity to seamlessly integrate with other systems, enabling the automatic management and printing of Bar-Code and RTK labels from a single platform.
The solution automatically gathers data from any system, whether SAP-based or non-SAP, including SAP ECC, third-party Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), legacy ERP systems, and more. This ensures that all relevant label information—such as material, process order, compliance details, customer-specific data, and delivery information—is sent to the label management software for accurate and automatic printing.
Key Benefits:
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- Automated Label Management: The entire label management and printing process is automated, eliminating the need for manual data gathering.
- Reduced Labeling Errors: Data is accurately collected and processed for each label, minimizing human error.
- Accurate Shipments: Products are delivered on time and to the correct location, improving customer satisfaction.
- Compliance Adherence: The solution ensures strict adherence to customer-specific and regulatory compliance requirements.
This SAP MII-based solution delivered by RTS Consulting transformed the manufacturer’s labeling process, reducing errors, ensuring compliance, and improving operational efficiency. With automated label printing and data management, the company saw a significant reduction in shipping errors and customer complaints, leading to improved delivery times and customer satisfaction.
For more information, please contact:
Vic Briccardi, Partner
RTS Consulting – Automation
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.rtsperfectplant.com
Case Studies
1. Pharmaceutical Company:
A US-based pharmaceutical company, after a significant corporate restructuring, needed to upgrade or replace their WebSphere-based integration solution to align with new business requirements.
2. Brewery with 350+ Years of Heritage:
The second company, a brewery with over 350 years of history, had deployed an ERP to shop floor interface using third-party middleware (e-link), and was facing the same decision.
Decision-Making Considerations:
Both companies evaluated the following criteria in their decision to upgrade or replace middleware:
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- Total cost of solution upgrade
- Modification of interface compatibility with the latest ECC release
- Long-term compatibility and support with SAP and Microsoft
- Reliability to support real-time, bi-directional data flow
- Scalability to support future production requirements and new releases
- Integration of additional plant-level solutions
The RTS Solution: Replacing Middleware with SAP MII
Both companies turned to RTS Consulting as a trusted advisor to assess their MES and ERP landscapes and recommend the best solution. RTS proposed replacing both integration systems with SAP MII, a Best-in-Classinterface between ERP and MES systems. This allowed both companies to streamline their operations while minimizing risk and cost.
Drive Operational Excellence with SAP MII
For the pharmaceutical company, the solution included data transfer from SAP ERP to the Rockwell MES system installed in the plant, handling:
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- Bill of Material (BOM)
- Stock Status
- Material Master
- Process Order
- Recipe
- Goods Issue/Goods Receipt (GI/GR)
For the brewery, the project replaced existing functionality with SAP MII for:
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- Control Recipe Download from SAP PP-PI to GE Proficy MES System
- Process Message Download from SAP PP-PI to Proficy, and vice versa
- Monitoring and logging for support interface
Both projects were successfully delivered within 12 weeks, providing the companies with a cost-effective, scalable, and flexible solution.
Benefits of SAP MII as a Middleware Platform
1. Lower Total Cost of Ownership: By leveraging the existing SAP ERP system and eliminating the need for custom development, the companies reduced their total cost of ownership using SAP MII’s out-of-the-box integration tools.
2. Seamless Integration with SAP ERP: SAP MII provided a corporate standard for shop floor integration with ECC, reducing risk and costs. It also provided data buffering capabilities, allowing operations to continue seamlessly in case of network issues, ECC maintenance, or unplanned downtime.
3. Low Risk to the Business: By standardizing on SAP solutions, both companies eliminated concerns about obsolete software and custom integration, ensuring long-term reliability.
4. Shop Floor Granular Visibility: By standardizing on SAP solutions, both companies eliminated concerns about obsolete software and custom integration, ensuring long-term reliability.
5. Scalability: SAP MII provided the flexibility to expand, integrate, and bundle various functionalities as needed.
6. Improved Efficiencies: With bi-directional integration to all shop floor systems, the companies experienced increased visibility and operational efficiency, supporting their journey toward operational excellence.
Contact RTS Consulting for More Information:
Vic Briccardi, Partner
RTS Consulting – Automation
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.rtsperfectplant.com
USA and Canada: (416) 798-2511