Idhammar’s OEE system creates savings for Premier Foods

Premier Foods is reaping the benefits of an Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) rollout programme instigated by Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) more than two years before it was assimilated into the Premier Foods group.

According to Manufacturing Computer Solutions, the Hovis bread production division of Premier Foods has seen a 7% (£400k) reduction in its annual gas costs, thanks to the implementation of Idhammar Systems’ OEE Management System software. Savings in labour unit cost and product wastage have also been delivered.

Idhammer’s OEE system provides automatic measurement, monitoring and reporting tools to highlight areas of inefficiency needing analysis and action. Concretely, it has enabled Hovis bread production to address the impact of unplanned production stops, slow running equipment, shortage of materials and wrong date codes.

The programme to roll out the OEE system across all the RHM divisions was begun in 2004, with the Hovis bread production (British Bakeries) implementations completed in 2005, and the Rank Hovis flour mills implemented in 2006.

In addition, the Campbells business, acquired by Premier Foods in 2006, had a similar Idhammar OEE rollout programme back in 2003.

SOA enables P&G to re-use more code

BEA Systems Inc., recently acquired by Oracle Corp., announced that Procter & Gamble had implemented a service-oriented architecture (SOA) running on BEA technologies.

At the front end is a new on-line workspace, designed to act as a portal to the company’s information and knowledge. Initially rolled out to some 2000 P&G users, the workspace is intended at term (2010) to provide decision-support information to more than 30000 users.

At the back end, BEA AquaLogic systems provide the foundation for P&G’s new service-oriented architecture: data sourcing and serving, integration and messaging, and a security layer to protect confidential and sensitive information.

Our vision is a fundamental transformation of the way we operate: using innovative technologies to help us work smarter, faster and more efficiently. BEA is an important contributor to that vision.
Filippo Passerini, CIO and Global Services Officer, Procter & Gamble.

Computerweekly reports that Procter & Gamble expect the new BEA platform to enable them to significantly leverage existing IT application investment through increased code re-use.

The BEA SOA platform allows P&G to integrate existing business applications, from SAP to custom-built tools in J2E and .net. Applications and code modules are catalogued and then made available as services through the portal to enable re-use by other parts of the business.

Terry McFadden, P&G’s associate director for enterprise architecture, said in the initial rollout to the 2000 pilot users, the company had achieved up to 25% re-use of internally developed code. P&G expects at term to be able to re-use up to half of its internally developed application code as it rolls out SOA across its business.

We have a myriad of businesses and business units in the organisation, but many require the same information and by implementing an SOA it means we can develop functionality with re-use in mind to cut application development costs.
Terry McFadden, Associate Director for Enterprise Architecture, Procter & Gamble.

Everyone wins in Mars-Wrigley deal – Even Cadbury

Major news in the confectionary world this week as details emerged of the takeover of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company by Mars Inc.

The merger, which could take six to twelve months to close, will see Mars paying $80 cash for each share of Wrigley stock in what amounts to a $23 billion deal.

The combined Mars and Wrigley will now overtake Cadbury as the world’s biggest confectionery company, with an estimated global market share of 14.4 per cent.

The deal is hopefully particularly good news for Wrigley, which has not been able to fully leverage its brands in the past and could profit from the size of Mars and its strength in innovation. Last year Wrigley conceded 3 points of gum share to Cadbury, thanks to growth in new products such as gum proposing dental benefits.

In a roundabout way, Cadbury probably also profits from this deal: its biggest rival bidder for Hershey is likely out of the picture for good. A new offer from Cadbury seems likely now that Wrigley (who came close to buying Hershey in 2002) is out of the way.

Henkel optimises network with Ipanema

Household and DIY goods manufacturer Henkel migrated its European WAN from frame relay to MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) in 2006. A year on, the company was looking for an advanced network traffic management system.

An article in IT Pro yesterday covered Henkel’s choice of Ipanema Technolgies’ Application Traffic Management System – actually announced back in July (pdf).

Steffen Gelessus, Systems Manager at Henkel, remarked “the use of the Ipanema system is a genuine quantum leap for us. With its finely calibrated monitoring and reporting functions, we obtain a more detailed overview of network traffic and can thus plan our capacities precisely and optimize the network.”

The Ipanema system was for us the ‘enabler’ to make full use of the MPLS technology benefits.

For more, see the case study on Ipanema’s site (pdf).

Searching the Internet for FMCG products

Shoppers use the Internet more and more for searching information before they buy – technical details, price comparisons, reviews from previous purchasers, etc. But now it seems that it’s not just about consumer electronics and big-money items like cars… there are actually a lot of consumers out there who are using the Internet to search for FMCG products.

Findings from a new research study called “The Digital Shelf” by comScore, Yahoo, Proctor & Gamble and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), show significant use of the Internet to search for consumer packaged goods, and suggest correlation between online activity and offline purchase behaviour, lending credibility to the argument that there may be significant brand-building and sales-growth opportunities in search marketing.

Categories studied included baby care, personal care, home care, and packaged food. In the three months of the study, food product searches dominated, but searches for baby products and personal care products were also significant, with the majority of searches motivated by product research and the hope of finding help in making a purchase decision.