About Unilever
Unilever is a multinational company specialized in food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care goods manufacturing. The company owns over 400 brands worldwide. Four manufacturing plants are present in Poland:
- Poznań (responsible for producing instant soups – both dehydrated and store-bought, spices, mayonnaise, ketchup)
- Katowice (production of margarines, fats, liquid spices as well as mixing, packing and distribution of tea)
- Bydgoszcz (detergents, personal care products, tooth paste)
- Banin near Gdańsk (ice cream production)
Objectives of the implementation process
One of the key problems identified by the client has been an issue with detection of mistakes that occur during meal kit sets assembly and reassuring that the packaging contains the right product. It has been particularly emphasized to ensure high reliability of the control process – each unnecessary stoppage in the production process generates additional costs, hence the need to increase the process’s efficiency.
Overview of the solution applied
In order to meet the goals set by the client for the plant in Poznań, SmartMES Efficiency&Qualty has been chosen for implementation. The already existing, very demanding procedure of control over the packaging quality has been improved through implementation of additional, comprehensive solution based on automatic vision control.
Due to advanced methods of product sachet picture recognition and possibility to compare it with a predetermined pattern emerged a possibility to capture and eliminate any undesirable situations, thus improving efficiency of the production process. Creating records of each error along with collecting pictures that caused the alarm allows the workstation operator to quickly and easily determine the cause of the problem and eliminate it.
Achieved benefits
- The likelihood of products containing the wrong contents being released to the market has been significantly reduced.
- Automatization allowed to speed up the process of quality control.
- Reduced amount of losses caused by stoppages and alarms.
