Adams Foods installs factory performance software

The company, supplies over 200m packs of cheese a year, including Pilgrims Choice, to major food retailers in the UK and will use the software at its £30m pre-packaging plant in Leek, Staffordshire.

The single system operates across smartphones, tablets, touch screens, desktops and large shop-floor displays, reporting factory performance data in real time.

Eliminating product recalls​

Jarnail Sani, director operations, Adams Foods, said the PDX Performance is an add-on to its previously installed PDX Autocoding, which scans every product to check for correct date code and packaging.

“If there are any errors the line will stop. The issue can then be resolved and the line restarted, eliminating the risk of product recalls,” he added.

Olympus Automation released its next generation PDX Performance software this year and it can be used as an add-on or standalone piece of software to report factory performance.

Adams Food Ingredients, an English subsidiary of the Irish Dairy Board, opened a €12.7m plant also in Leek this year, which complements the IDB’s cheese pre-packaging plant, commissioned in 2009.

The 65,000 sq ft facility, includes an innovation centre and powder blending production facility as well as the cheese pre-packaging plant. 

Improving waste reduction​

“Olympus has a variety of add-on modules which meant we were able to include Performance reporting and live checkweigher links to meet the growing demands of our business​,” added Sani.
The giveaway reporting from checkweighers alerts operators to make adjustments in real time, improving waste reduction.

Jake Norman, strategy and marketing development, Olympus Automation, said the PDX Performance software uses intelligent targeting, so individuals are only shown relevant data to their objectives to remove distractions.

Predictive analytics​

“The next step is to use data to predict problems and eliminate them before they can  reduce performance​,” he said.

“Predictive analytics has the ability to minimise downtime in food factories everywhere by exploiting patterns in historical data​.

“At Adams Foods they cut and package different varieties of cheese requiring different line setup. By looking at the historical operational performance for a given cheese, the line can be optimised to minimise downtime from the start of a run, adjusting in real time if any change is detected, boosting operational performance​.”

Click here to see​ the software.