Global Manufacturing Trends: The Future of Dairy Production
Industry 4.0 innovation is increasingly shaping the dairy manufacturing industry. What started as a trend is now a new reality for many dairy manufacturers globally as they are taking steps to overcome challenges with a paperless factory. Industry 4.0 advancements have presented many beneficial opportunities for dairy manufacturers by transforming products and processes for enhanced value and achieving operational excellence.
Why Lean Manufacturing Is Among the Key Global Manufacturing Trends
Digital lean manufacturing has transpired through a powerful merger of the core lean principles and digital technology, playing an imperative role in the future of dairy manufacturing.
A paperless factory agenda should be at the core of all future growth strategies for dairy manufacturers if they are looking to achieve long-term resilience and remain competitive. Dairy manufacturers will need to take a digital approach to lean manufacturing to respond effectively to emerging challenges and the need to increase sustainability and create more proactive quality processes.
Industry 4.0 innovations are changing the way dairy is manufactured. Smart factories are enabling higher value for manufacturers with greater visibility and insight into the current manufacturing process. Identifying ways to optimise processes has now become effortless through automation and digital technologies.
The Digitisation of Lean Manufacturing Tools
Lean principles have played a driving role in shaping the entire manufacturing industry for many decades, and introducing digital technology has further enhanced lean manufacturing. Digital lean manufacturing is the way forward as it enables real-time data-driven decision-making to address hidden issues and facilitate a culture of continuous improvement.
The benefits of digital lean manufacturing go beyond individual department success. Using digital tools to gain an accurate representation of day-to-day dairy production operations contributes to the success of Dairy Co-ops globally. It causes an extensive increase in stakeholder satisfaction.
Digitising lean manufacturing processes across the product lifecycle enables countless benefits and contributes to the success of Dairy Co-ops globally.
- Streamlining processes resulting in lower operating costs and greater efficiency
- Improving quality while reducing costs
- Achieve data transparency and full process traceability in a matter of minutes
- Access to data in real-time to make more informed decisions
Digital Lean Manufacturing Tools in Action
SoftTrace combines lean tools with software functionality to solve problems and optimise manufacturing processes, improving the bottom line for our customers. Our solutions aim to add value by enhancing customer processes with industry 4.0 innovations.
1. Waste Elimination
The elimination of waste is one of the most critical principles of lean manufacturing. Eliminating waste allows dairy manufacturers to focus on value-adding activities resulting in more value for the customer. SoftTrace assists customers with waste elimination with a fully paperless solution.
- Eliminates illegible paper records, manual human data entry and the risks associated with the same
- Creating efficiency throughout the dairy manufacturing plant
2. Continuous Improvement
Lean manufacturing provides the foundations for continuous improvement across all dairy manufacturing plants. This requires improvements, both large and small scale, to adjust processes to meet targets effectively. SoftTrace software functionality ensures process optimisation at every stage of the manufacturing process.
- Assists in reducing loss and waste incurred as a consequence of process drift
- Automated processes resulting in significant time reduction and redeployment of human resources
3. Quality built-in
Quality is built into manufacturing by detecting and preventing risks with lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing focus is on doing it right the first time – alike SoftTrace.
- Capturing test analysis data and sample results and highlighting out-of-specification and non-conforming products in real time.
- Data capture direct from the analysis instrument, mitigating the risk of human manual data entry error.
- Optimising right first-time product manufacturing
Embrace One of The Biggest Global Manufacturing Trends
While business leaders are embracing digital transformation, only around 20% report successful implementation. Lack of vital knowledge around digitisation and global manufacturing trends can hinder dairy manufacturers from a successful digital transformation.
With over 20 years’ experience as digital transformation consultants and a great understanding of the dairy manufacturing industry, our team of experts can help you identify which solution is best for your plant, meeting specific requirements. Get in touch with us today.
From site surveys, digitisation consultancy, data migration and software customisation SoftTrace provides the service necessary to educate and guide your team along your business’s digital transformation journey providing successful software implementation and on-going customer support service.
If you want to learn more about our solution and how it has improved our clients’ processes, check out our Case Studies.