Excited to see a new flavor of chocolate at your neighborhood supermarket? It probably arrived there after a long and complex journey beginning in cocoa farms halfway around the world, with every step along the confectionery value chain increasingly reliant on digital technology.
While the chocolate manufacturing industry is known for its rich history and traditional methods, connected industrial ecosystems are helping the sector push the boundaries of what is possible.
B2B manufacturer Barry Callebaut AG is a great example of the power of digital transformation in manufacturing management. The Swiss-Belgian company manufactures more than 2.2 million tons of confectionery every year in its 64 factories, making it the global leader in producing chocolate and cocoa—responsible for about 25% of the world’s production.
But Callebaut must contend with complex processes and variable supply quality on a daily basis. Milk powder, for example, can vary in consistency from one batch to another, requiring machines to be constantly recalibrated to ensure a quality product. Scale that variability across the value chain and you have an idea of what it takes to consistently deliver the same great taste consumers have come to know and love.
Over the past few years, Barry Callebaut has leveraged digital transformation to support product innovation, enhance consistency, leverage cost reductions and improve sustainability. At the core of its approach is a smart factory model.
The company uses a next-generation MES to pull existing HMI/SCADA (human-machine interface/supervisory control and data acquisition) plant data into a connected, real-time, standardized, digital backbone that is available to the appropriate teams across the organization. Leveraging this single source of truth on an industrial data platform, these teams can test new use cases at pilot sites and learn from the results. Successes and lessons are captured using a modular approach to improve the smart factory standard, so best practices can quickly be shared and scaled across the company’s global network.
Immediate results from this data stream have allowed the team to conduct higher quality analyses of their run rates. In addition, the technology makes it easier to design and maintain systems with a strong focus on UI/UX to give operators a better understanding of what’s happening across the organization. With these new insights, Barry Callebaut has been able to reduce variability and uncover hidden capacity, improving overall productivity by ≥10%—which is equivalent to a new production line. Data is the “golden ticket” for this network of chocolate factories.
Because teams can view processes, events and historical data across a single digital thread, they can optimize operations in real time. The overlay of AI analytics further improves decision making and process analyses. And when this information is scaled across global enterprises, the result is exponential gains.
At Callebaut, the team now wants to crystallize existing gains across its network. By 2025, the company hopes that autonomous production lines will be able to produce fully automated batches with no quality defects at maximum capacity.
Connected industrial ecosystems are transforming operations management and outcomes in a wide range of manufacturing industries. At a time when manufacturers are experiencing disruptions at every link in their value chain, data-led digital technologies are supporting the growth of more resilient, competitive and demand-driven businesses.
Whether in chocolate or other areas of manufacturing, the integration of digital technology will continue to drive advancements and deliver delightful experiences to consumers worldwide.
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