SPC has been a staple of Australian households for almost 100 years, providing high quality products including packaged fruit, jams, baked beans and many more.
The SPC manufacturing facility in the Goulburn Valley is a hub of activity, processing approximately 150,000 tonnes of fruit and tomatoes a year and seeing 1,250 pallets received and dispatched every day.
SPC is focussed on providing quality, nutritious pantry items for Australians and supporting local Australian growers and farmers.
Committed to delivering value from its supply chain to consumers, SPC needed insight into performance improvement opportunities to support business decisions.
SPC engaged Nukon to help, our team started with a detailed analysis of their needs and current situation which would best support them to realise their efficiency and quality goals.
Nukon developed a Manufacturing Execution System to provide the manufacturing team with world’s best practice real time data and tools, empowering them to manage the complexity of manufacturing multiple products across 42 processes.
Process improvements included:
Line startup and changeover
Machine utilisation
Efficient use of cookers
Paperless quality system (from 1800 paper checksto 240 paperless checks)
In-built quality auditing system
Crew visibility and flexibility
Fast classification of fruit quality as it arrives in the factory
Visibility of material flow for mass balance and yield
Reduced energy costs
David Frizzell explained a key factor in the success of the system. “To realise the full benefit of the new system, it needed to be embraced by our operating team. Nukon worked with us to engage our team in the project.”
Nukon developed a user adoption program, providing the team with access to performance metrics and tools to be able to deliver and measure changes.
SPC now enjoys real time connectivity between their production systems and other business systems and is seeing the benefits of even greater quality and efficiency. SPC realised a return on investment which was estimated at $500,000 in the first year.
“We now have the technology, the tools and the culture to drive productivity and ensure we will continue to deliver the very best value for Australian households and our export markets around the world, well into the future.” David Frizzell, SPC Ardmona Business Process Improvement Manager.