Amcor goes paperless with Operator
Operator has supported Amcor Flexibles Europe, one of Denmark’s largest manufacturers of plastic packaging, to achieve paperless production.
Amcor Flexibles Europe is one of Denmark’s largest manufacturers of plastic packaging. The production facility in Horsens employs 500 people who manufacture large quantities of flexible packaging every day.
With a paper based production process that lacked flexibility and risked losing valuable information, Amcor was looking for a way to become more efficient and more competitive.
After a thorough search for the best solution, Amcor decided to replace all the paper with Operator, a MES System (Manufacturing Execution System). The move has allowed wider access to updated information and has helped optimize Amcor’s production.
A solution that is visible
With a paper-based production process, life at Amcor was not very flexible. Only a few people had access to the right information, and this constantly slowed production. Three years after introducing Operator, however, Amcor has nearly obtained their goal of eliminating all paper from the production process. This has allowed all users access to the same updated information.
„Earlier, employees had lists of productions on paper several days in advance„, says Amcor project engineer Helene Høyby. „It meant that our production plan was very ridged. At the same time, the access to information was limited to the number of lists printed. Information on a list could also be outdated because of changes in the plan.”
By eliminating the paper, Amcor users can now enter changes that everyone will see immediately. The result is a very flexible production process where quick changes to production plans can easily be communicated to employees.
Installed solution
- Connected to production scheduling system, while allowing for limited possibilities for sequence optimization in each department
- Connected to SAP ERP
- Complex solution – remove all paper and IT islands
- Work lists
- Job reporting
- Viewing of instructions and drawings
- Printing of labels for WIP, finished goods and pallets
- Control of WIP storage and WIP transports
- Full traceability from raw material to finished goods (inside Operator)
- Focus on quality reporting and control, e.g.:
- Scrap reporting including reason codes
- Reporting of errors and corrective actions to avoid the same error next time
- Label Management
- Device Input Handling
Minimal training time
The production equipment at Amcor is now connected to a PC where all production information is administered. This could have meant new challenges for production employees who are not used to using PCs, but this was not the case. Employees found that Operator was both easy to learn and use. Clear symbols, a simple color code, and a customizable user interface reduced education time and made for a faster implementation.
„It is a symbolism that everybody understands” says Helene Høyby. „By placing PCs at production units, the production employees had access to enter data, which meant increasing demands to data discipline. Bad input equals bad output. Therefore, we are still working on having a high data discipline among the employees.„
„When you get to know the system, it provides you with better data than before because information is entered at the source” says Høyby. „Therefore, we have a better basis for adjusting and improving the production. By means of statistics and analyses, we can now optimize the future production.„
Why Operator?
When Amcor decided to invest in a new production system, the company considered SAP R3 because it had been chosen as the company’s administrative system. It turned out that SAP did not have the functionality or the flexibility that Amcor demanded. Operator, on the other hand, did.
„Operator is an open and flexible system, thus it works very well with SAP. We enter production orders, sales orders etc. in SAP, which are then transferred to Operator” says Helene Høyby.
„Another important functionality in Operator was traceability. If we have a problem with a finished and delivered reel, we can trace back to the original reel causing the problem. Afterwards, we can trace the other customers who have received a reel that may be defective. When we contact the customer to call attention to the problem, we thereby have the possibility of providing good service due to the possibilities we have in Operator.„
Porozmawiajmy
Nasze spotkania z nowymi klientami są zawsze darmowe, bez zobowiązań. Staramy się, by były również wartościowe. Porozmawiamy o specyfice Twojej produkcji → jest do dla nas klucz do przedstawienia odpowiedniego rozwiązania 
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