A well-known food company: dual-plant OEE and end-to-end traceability
Ingredient error-proofing, GMP-grade end-to-end traceability, and a Japanese-convention OEE model line rolled out across two plants.
A well-known food company with two plants (Fengxian / Minhang), demanding lean management from headquarters, and food safety as a non-negotiable business red line.
Customer background
A well-known food company with two plants (Fengxian / Minhang). Headquarters sets demanding lean management standards, and food safety is a non-negotiable business red line.
Challenges
- Manual ingredient weighing depended on employees' sense of responsibility — a wrong or missed ingredient was a food safety incident
- OEE losses could not be located — changeovers, minor stops and reduced speed all hid in a black box
- Weighing, packaging and outer-carton data were scattered; traceability meant digging through paper records, taking days
Our solution
Ingredient error-proofing system: a 4-workstation + 13-electronic-scale + central-server architecture, weighing compared against target weights in real time with out-of-tolerance audio-visual alarms; barcode verification on material issue and return plus alarms reduce the risk of wrong or missed picks, with specific results confirmed per project rules and acceptance; full-element traceability across man, machine, material, method and environment meets GMP/ISO requirements; .NET Core 8 + high-availability database modern architecture, with ERP/MES interfaces reserved.
OEE model line: aligned with headquarters' Japanese OEE calculation conventions; after the single-line demonstration ran through, it was rolled out to both plants as a platform; linked with the Andon system — minor stops recorded immediately, losses attributed immediately.
Whole-line monitoring: chocolate pipelines with 9 tanks fixed-mapped across three lines, dual-operator touch-screen architecture, alarms and operation logs archived daily and linked to line OEE; weighing traceability + barcode rules + video linkage; alarm publishing and energy management.
Continuous service: from the model line to plant-wide digitalization, expanding year by year, with annual maintenance safeguarding long-term system health.
Results
- Ingredient errors moved from "prevented by experience" to "prevented by the system" — out of tolerance triggers an alarm; wrong picks cannot be scanned through
- Traceability moved from flipping through paper records (days) to scanning a code (minutes)
- OEE losses became transparent — improvement finally had data to grip; during audits, the data is the evidence
Technology stack
Project boundaries and replication conditions
- Project boundaries：The implemented scope covers the OEE model line and dual-plant platform, Andon, manual ingredient error-proofing, chocolate pipeline monitoring, weighing traceability, alarm publishing, energy management and annual maintenance
- Applicability conditions：Plants with demanding formula, weighing or batch traceability requirements; GMP/ISO references describe the system's traceability design only and are not extended into certification claims
- Replication prerequisites：Before replication, confirm formula and barcode rules, scale/PLC interfaces, tolerances, traceability fields and audit requirements
- Not disclosed：The customer's real name is not disclosed; inferred improvement figures (ingredient error rate, traceability time comparisons, etc.) are not disclosed
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