In the Aviateur factory, cookies are made out of dough on the production line, before being baked in an oven and sent to a cooling tower to cool down. Next, the cookies are packaged in the packaging department and sent to various end customers. Before, the communication between these departments was largely handled by people, which made it subjective. On top of that, it became clear that information was not always shared effectively in the event of a process malfunction or product error. To gain more insight into its production process, Aviateur wanted to implement an OEE system.

Our Visual Link software engineers have developed an OEE application that the packaging department can use to notify the production department that something went wrong. At the same time, this OEE tool allows the production department to warn the packaging department in advance about a malfunction or losses that may affect the work of the packaging operators. With this new system, all communication has been digitised to ensure that facts are communicated in a more objective manner.

Since the OEE system has to communicate with Aviateur's Production Management System, it was not possible to simply implement and use a standard OEE system. During the pre-engineering phase, we therefore used a single production line as a pilot. To begin with, we defined all signals on this line so that products could be counted, errors could be detected, etcetera. We also built an interface with the existing PMS system to correctly transfer data - e.g. order and product information - to the OEE tool. The OEE system is now gradually becoming more robust and reliable.

Aviateur's production manager is highly satisfied with the results of the pilot. The plan is now to roll out the OEE system on the other lines in the factory and at Aviateur's other production sites. Thus far, the implementation of our OEE application has resulted in an increased output, fewer losses and improved efficiency for Aviateur.