Chocolatier uses data-driven automation to boost production-line performance

Noi Sirius, Iceland's leading chocolatier and a much-loved household name, needed ways to enhance the reliability and performance of its production line, while also streamlining its support workflows to reduce the burden on the maintenance team and improve productivity.

After considering a range of options, the company decided to standardise the management of its maintenance operations using Fiix CMMS (computerised maintenance management system) software from Rockwell Automation. Using Fiix, Noi Sirius has been able to capture information about the performance and maintenance status of all its core assembly-line machinery.

"This has been a highly collaborative and successful project," said Asa Arvidsson, regional vice president sales, north region, Rockwell Automation. "Together with Noi Sirius, our consultants helped design new and streamlined maintenance workflows using the Fiix platform. It's been highly gratifying to see the improvements this has made in such a short time. We very much appreciate the partnership with Noi Sirius and look forward to seeing the results of the predictive-maintenance project."

Within just four months, the maintenance team went from working mainly on reactive maintenance to spending most of their time on preventative work, designed to avoid downtime before it occurred. The Noi Sirius maintenance team was able to minimise interruptions caused by the need for quick fixes to unforeseen problems using the Fiix intelligent queue-management features. The new CMMS platform enabled the team to work collaboratively with operations staff on prioritizing the job queue.

Now, more than six months since the initial deployment, Rockwell Automation and Noi Sirius are working together to network the entire production facility. When this is complete, working with Rockwell Automation consultants, the chocolatier will move to a data-driven, predictive model of maintenance, helping it to further maximise uptime, cut costs and improve productivity.

"Since adopting Fiix software, our maintenance staff are much happier," said Guomundur Ingi Einarsson, technical manager, Noi Sirius. "Now, they concentrate on preventing downtime rather than reacting to it. We have the data we need to prioritise our work intelligently and arrive at solutions faster. Furthermore, the predictive-maintenance project promises further improvements in the future."