_Real-time monitoring helps tobacco company succeed

Business challenge: Reduce paperwork and digitize data collection to be able to: respond faster locally and share knowledge globally, reduce downtime as well as eliminate labor and cost waste.

Technology: IIoT, Cloud, Opensource Solution development

Solution Delivered: Real-Time-Monitoring Web Application

Service: Full responsibility for the solution from requirements gathering via implementation, rollout on multiple plants, adoption, and finally maintenance.

About International Client

Our Client is a Big Tobacco company. They are a Leader in the next generation of Tobacco products. They operate in more than 180 countries. The Client has strongly invested in science and research to invent a new line of products. They as well created a huge center for the improvement and development of their products. This transformation includes as well new facilities equipped to manufacture a new line of mentioned products.

Background

The Client, along with the challenge of transforming the tobacco market into a smoke-free future, launched as well an effort to streamline its production processes and support line workers in their tasks.

The company attaches a strong focus on production process optimization, actively looking for ways to reduce any quality or productivity losses. Their goal was to build a solution that would replicate the analog folders realizing the same per-production processes, and supporting the supervision of production and user behavior at the production lines, on the plants.

Challenges and needs

The goal of this project was to quickly identify and capture downtime, streamline and oversee the behavior of production workers, and reduce downtime. Develop software to quickly identify problems on production lines that can be accessed from a Web browser, without the need for installing applications or complex configurations, and can be responsively customized for specific factories

It was a challenge to respond when an equipment operator notices an out-of-limit on the machine. In analog, reporting deviations and outages took a very long time. From the time of report recording, through the delivery process, management reviewing the report, to the time the decision was made and corrective action is taken. Such a circulation of information resulted in a much longer response time to the occurrence of failures or downtime, which influenced the failure to meet the initial assumptions for individual production lines (failure to realize KPIs).

The Client had a vision and realized that needs to provide the tools and digital solutions for people to enable their day-to-day work:

• Be able to get the proper data
• The proper analytics, so they can really perform best their tasks and get the right information to make a good decision
• Customize tools in order to eliminate workload and manual people work
• Access the tool from any customized digital device like a computer or tablet at any location and production line location

Solution: Document Management System (DMS) consists of 4 modules.

First, the TT PSC team in a workshop collected and validated the client’s business requirements.

The Client’s Account Manager in collaboration with Proxy Product Owner, and Team Leader from our company collected Business Requirements Definition. Standard Epic Delivery process was defined to name proper process which starts with collecting requirements and ends with implementation and deployment of a new feature on PRD

The next step was building the PoC mockups in a semi-operational version and delivering the test framework. We built the application environment on AWS from the scratch.

Listening to the client’s needs, we made an MVP model (Minimum Viable Product), that allowed us to develop the documentation for four production modules complying with the goals and assumptions of the project.

The production modules provide the Client with the following opportunities:

• Digitize the process of reporting downtime on the production line
• Faster data logging in DDS board by single sign log
• Automatic deviation log entry
• Access to real-time information that improves insight into operational progress
• Clear and legible reports
• Data gathering is easier giving the Process Lead more time to spend on data analysis
• Common repository for all standards, that enables the line team to access all standards from the various DMSSs whenever they want to check or validate these standards, especially during problem analysis

Key Technologies:

Environment: AWS

Backend: Java Spring Framework

Frontend: React

Open-source platform: Kubernetes

Architecture: Microservices

Application type: Web application

Microservice architecture allowed us to create independent software that delivers business functionality. The word “independent” is key here and means that this service can be deployed, maintain, and develop independently in other parts of the system.

Results

We are pleased to inform that the results of the implementation of Document Management System modules are satisfactory for the organization and meet their expectations. Developed modules that contribute to the improvement of quality and smooth communication between the different organizational structure levels. The developed solutions improve cooperation and cause faster reaction and decision-making by managers in case of downtime or disruptions on the production lines. The modules enable real-time monitoring of KPIs for the individual worker, production lines, and plants. Business and technical guidelines defined before the start of the project have been fulfilled:

• Paperless
• Rapid records management
• One click away – User-friendly, accessible application, easy-to-use, and understandable, based on AWS system
• Access to real-time information– Improved insight into operational progress
• Create independent software
• Creation of modules representing analog folders that replicate the same production processes, supporting the supervision of production and user behavior at production lines in each factory.
• Implement Real-time Records Management
• Refactoring, debugging, streamlining, and aligning the first 4 modules with the AWS solution, after a previously failed deployment on the OpenShift platform
• Project tasks estimation and implementation
• Completed the roll-out for all work centers which covered the core DMS to many users.
• Application support and maintenance
• Propose improvements to the Platform
• Advisory on application delivery and deployment process

A dedicated multimodule platform is an AWS-based system that eliminates paperwork, increases data sharing globally, reduces downtime, and provides our Client with the ability to react faster to situations in each factory.