Local SME helps Coca-Cola automate key production step

LOCAL enterprise software company PD Solutions, together with a unit of Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), is behind the automation of a key step in the making of Coca-Cola's drinks, reducing the time taken from days to minutes.

Scheduling the production of liquid concentrates at the Coca-Cola Singapore plant previously took one to two days - even longer if there were changes in orders or unexpected downtime in operations.

The Singapore plant caters to more than 24 markets in the region, and receives an average of 300 orders every week. Each set of orders is for a variety of concentrates, which each calls for a unique manufacturing process.

The plant's team of schedulers would map out a production plan by manually keying orders into an Excel spreadsheet.

Darrel Pon, production manager at Coca-Cola, said: "Despite continuous efforts to improve this process, the manual scheduling process continued to be time-consuming and reliant on the schedulers' experience."

Rolled out at the plant in June, the new system now automatically maps out orders in a Gantt chart in "a couple of minutes", based on a customised set of algorithms.

It also reduces a production line's changeover frequency by consolidating orders of a similar nature to be processed together.

It was developed by PD Solutions and the Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (ARTC), a unit of A*Star. ARTC was engaged first to help Coca-Cola digitise its shop floor, but it later roped in PD Solutions for its experience in production scheduling software.

ARTC chief executive David Low said the centre "often brings local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on board to co-innovate high-value solutions for global industry leaders".

Tay Ming Hui, managing director at PD Solutions, said: "Together with ARTC's experts, our team spent a considerable amount of time understanding and analysing the process, and most importantly, documenting them so we could determine an algorithm that would be useful and flexible for Coca-Cola."

A challenge they faced was the complexity of having many factors to account for, such as the variety of orders and configurations, tanks' capacities and preferred sequences to minimise changeover.

Another challenge lay in the need to transfer existing raw data and production parameters - most of which were in spreadsheets - to the system.

Still, the team was able to complete and implement the new system at the plant in less than six months.

Opening new doors

ARTC's Dr Low said: "Particularly in the face of technological disruption and the new world order, we must enable rapid adoption of new technologies by businesses."

Mr Pon at Coca-Cola said the new system has allowed plant schedulers and shift managers to channel their time to "other work that matters most".

PD Solutions, which has been mostly involved in the discrete manufacturing industry for the past 17 years, has deepened its knowledge through the project, particularly of the food and beverage (F&B) space.

"This will pave the way for us to create a more generic model of the software for further implementation in the F&B-related industry, where I believe a lot of local companies can benefit from digitising their production shop floors," said Mr Tay.

Also, the ARTC platform has helped to open the doors for SMEs like PD Solutions to larger organisations like Coca-Cola, he added.