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Real-Time SPC: A Missing Ingredient in the Food and Beverage Industry?

Manufacturers in the food and beverage industry are seen to be at a competitive disadvantage because they lack real-time visibility into their manufacturing operations.

Food and beverage manufacturers are behind their peers in other industries when it comes to collecting and leveraging real-time quality data across their manufacturing operations and supplier base. That critical information gap will likely decrease the competitiveness of F&B companies. That’s the key finding of a Sector Insight study by Boston-based Aberdeen Group, a research organization that benchmarks the best practices of leading manufacturers.

The study, “Food and Beverage Manufacturers Lack Real-Time Visibility into Production and Supply Chain,” looked into how F&B manufacturers measured up to best-in-class companies in other industries in five real-time visibility metrics:

1. Collecting quality data automatically across operations
2. Monitoring adverse events in real-time
3. Viewing quality performance of suppliers in real-time
4. Utilizing real-time data to perform root cause analysis for an adverse event
5. Using analytics to provide “predictive insights” based on the captured quality data 

F&B manufacturers were at or below industry average in each metric. Such performance could spell trouble considering the enormous pressure F&B manufacturers are under to address compliance and traceability. According to the study, the top demands of compliance and traceability are:

  • Meeting government regulatory requirements
  • Ensuring product quality and customer satisfaction
  • Reducing the cost of manufacturing operations
  • Maintaining or achieving a competitive advantage
  • Reducing number and severity of noncompliance and recall events 

“Given the competitive nature of the industry,” the report states, “any company not able to cope with these demands is in danger of losing market share as well as brand equity leading to long-term repercussions for the company.” To avoid such long-term consequences, the study recommends that F&B manufacturers should undertake aggressive strategies to improve quality, customer satisfaction, compliance and traceability:

  • Automate collection of quality data from the plant floor and supplier base. F&B manufacturers need to address this issue in particular; they are half as likely as best-in-class companies to have real-time visibility into supplier performance.
  • Leverage real-time data to provide actionable information, allowing for better decision-making and quicker responses to non-conformances and adverse events.
  • Adopt and establish real-time interoperability between enterprise-wide applications.

Ultimately, because each recommendation is centered on providing the right information at the right time, real-time SPC software becomes an at-the-ready, fully cooked tool that helps F&B manufacturers leverage both real-time and historical data—enabling improved decision-making, defect prevention and corrective action.

“In light of the recent food-safety problems in the industry, including some that led to deaths, companies in the food and beverage industry will be under greater scrutiny by the government and the public,” says Stephen A. Arnett, CEO of DataNet Quality Systems. “By implementing real-time SPC, they'll be more able to withstand this scrutiny. Not just because their records will be complete and their products will be traceable but also, more importantly, because they will have effectively refined their processes to produce output that is both safe and compliant.”

Arnett adds that the quality control and real-time SPC system built into DataNet’s WinSPC software has helped hundreds of companies dramatically improve the quality of their products and increase the efficiency of their manufacturing operations. “We accomplish this primarily by facilitating visiblity of key parameters in real-time. This visiblity is something customers really appreciate because it enables them to be confident that out-of-spec or non-optimum product will be detected as early in the production cycle as possible."

For a fee, the Aberdeen study can be read at www.aberdeen.com. You can also, for no charge, read an article on the study by the study's author at www.automationworld.com/columns-5236.
 
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