Improving Productivity For Food And Beverage Manufacturers

Using FourJaw to collect and analyse data on food and beverage production gives manufacturers valuable insights into their operations, allowing them to make data-driven decisions that can lead to significant improvements. 

Food manufacturing on production line

Is your production line eating your margins?

We speak to lots of manufacturers who say "The factory floor looks busy, so the production line must be at capacity". We created FourJaw machine monitoring to give you a true view of your factory floor's capacity by providing real-time data, equipping you with the insight to make informed decisions.

Producing FMCG goods means you have to ensure your production line is running as efficiently as possible to ensure you are squeezing everything you can out of machine utilisation and production capacity.

Supercharge your food and beverage production line with real-time machine monitoring and unlock hidden productivity.

Book a Demo

Drive Productivity Gain Capacity Grow Profitability

Whether you're measuring 'Mean Time Between Failure' (MTBF) or Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) FourJaw's plug & play machine monitoring software will capture the data insight you need to be confident that your factory's production lines are running as efficiently, productively and sustainably as possible. Enabling you to increase output and your bottom line. 

Book a Demo

Drinks being manufactured

Enable lights-out manufacturing 

“Tracking out lights out was something I didn’t expect to be able to do so quickly. Due to FourJaw’s machine monitoring insight, we now have an additional capacity that we are now able to keep track of, and as the work builds up we can then plan that in which just gives us another string to our bow: if work comes in and we are going to struggle to get that through during normal hours, we have this additional capacity we can call on.”

Discover how FourJaw's machine monitoring software enabled this food packaging manufacturer to increase capacity through lights-out manufacturing.

Read Case Study

How Can Manufacturing Analytics Be Used In The Food Industry? 

  • Reduce Stoppages
  • Increase Productivity
  • Make Data-Backed Decisions

Reduce Stoppages

Optimise food production by analysing machine usage data, identifying top stoppage causes and preventing unplanned downtime.
staging10.fourjaw.app_report_downtime_pareto_run_report_id=62e274b823cb922c7983d24f&report_name=Top+10+Downtime+Reasons+-+Last+30+Days&type=Factory&entity_ids=62e267322ba70f38dbc10ab5&timescale=last_1_m (4)

Intelligent analytics and production software can be used in food manufacturing to optimise production schedules and reduce stoppages/downtime.

By analysing data on machine usage/utilisation, manufacturers can see trends and identify the top causes of stoppages by machine, cell/line or factory.

This allows for processes to be put in place to prevent unplanned machine downtime.

Increase Productivity

Boost productivity and efficiency by identifying and removing the barriers to enhanced OEE.
demo10.fourjaw.app_report_oee_through_time_run_report_id=63bd41e42f443c0c0205d7af&report_name=OEE+over+the+last+7+day+(hrs)&type=Factory&entity_ids=6321cfa2f2a3ee2367283346&date_range_tabs=quickSelect&t

Reviewing reports on machine performance, food manufacturers can identify areas in need of improvement, and provide training and resources to combat inefficiencies.

Make Data-Backed Decisions

Data analytics helps food manufacturers make better, more informed decisions
demo10.fourjaw.app_report_time_in_each_status_run_report_id=62e95f90c7a3fdfebceb810e&report_name=Status+Breakdown+By+Cell+-+Last+14+Days&type=Cell&entity_ids=62e26642fb68b509d55eca47&entity_ids=62e26647c939
Data analytics drives better decisions, increased productivity, reduced downtime, improved efficiency, and less waste.

With the right data analytics tools and processes in place, manufacturers can gain a deeper understanding of their operations and identify opportunities for improvement.

Creating a more efficient and profitable business, whilst supporting sustainability in the food manufacturing industry. 

Read Our Recent News

Let’s make your line more efficient.

Book a Demo
MachineLink iot device for monitoring any automotive manufacturing machine

FourJaw Works On Any Food or Beverage Production Machine

Regardless of age, brand or model.

HOW IT WORKS IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS*

1

Install Hardware

Simply supply power to the IoT device, then attach a sensor to your machine’s power cable.

2

Connect To WiFi

Connect the hardware to your shop-floor WiFi network.

3

Unlock Productivity

Login to the app and start identifying and eliminating inefficiencies.

*Self-installation takes around 10-20 minutes – no specialist experience required. ** Please note this can take much longer depending on the time from provisioning to installation.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Can Machine Monitoring Improve Productivity & Machine Utilisation?

Machine monitoring provides manufacturers with full factory floor visibility of how well machines are being utilised, by showing the machine downtime and uptimes.

With the FourJaw machine monitoring platform, operatives can categorise the reasons for the downtimes so factory floor managers get a clear picture of how productive the machines are. Here's a useful case study that shows how a manufacturer improved their machine utilisation by 400%

Does FourJaw machine monitoring work on old machines?

Yes. Our machine monitoring platform was specifically designed to make machine monitoring accessible to manufacturers of all shapes and sizes, which of course meant we designed our platform to work with any type of machine, regardless of age, brand or model. So you can turn your 50-year-old machine into a 'smart machine', helping you to understand how productive your machines are. 

Can Machine monitoring help reduce energy usage?

Although not specifically designed to reduce energy usage, machine monitoring software can help factories reduce their energy usage indirectly and therefore become more efficient and sustainable. 

Because our machine monitoring software reports on your machine utilisation, by machine, cell or factory, the data allows you to see when a machine is being run but doesn't need to be, i.e. wasting energy. By identifying 'negative machine downtime' we have helped a number of manufacturers reduce their production costs, thanks to the data insight FourJaw machine monitoring provided. 

Is plug-and-play machine monitoring software expensive?

No. Unlike traditional machine monitoring solutions, we designed our machine monitoring platform to be accessible, not only did we make it easy to install (minimising disruption to your shop floor) but we also made it affordable.

We offer monthly payment plans and you can install it yourself, so there are no high upfront installation costs often associated with traditional machine monitoring solutions. Find out more about the pricing plans we offer here

What data does FourJaw machine monitoring capture?

Utilisation Data

FourJaw starts with utilisation data in it's simplest form. The specially designed MachineLink hardware is a combination of miniature computer and current clamps. These two current clamps are typically attached to the total power incomer of the machine and the main drive unit, for example a spindle motor of a CNC machine.

This raw data is recorded every second and sent to our secure Azure cloud platform. The data is then instantly built into chunks of running and not running data, typically over 20-second periods, which is then displayed and categorised throughout the FourJaw platform.

What this provides is a very accurate measure of when the productive part of the machine experiences load and when it does not. Applied to this data is FourJaw's Machine Learning program which automatically classifies the data into productive/active and idle/inactive time. This means warm up runs and free air cycles are classed as idle time in the case of a CNC machine as the machines is not in its productive state.

How does FourJaw capture Machine Downtime Data?

Downtime reasons are inputted by the operator of the machine via a tablet which is installed beside the operator.

Each tablet is paired with a machine via the same FourJaw portal running on a Chrome browser.

When the MachineLink hardware, detailed above, measures a set period of idle time a pop-up appears on the platform asking the user to log why the period of idle time has occurred, this can be inputted straight away, during the stoppage/downtime or even post the event if required.

Does FourJaw machine monitoring platform capture work booking and job data?

Yes it does. 

Work order information can be inputted manually or directly imported from a .CSV file.

This data includes the WO number, operations, machine names, estimated job time and start dates.

As with all parts of the FourJaw platform, this data is combined with the downtime and utilisation data to provide meaningful and actionable insights into your production process.

I already monitor Work order times, Ops times and setup times, why is this different?

As a manufacturer, it's highly likely you'll already be monitoring Work order times, Ops times and setup times, of course, this is all useful, however, it does not give you the big picture.

For instance, it doesn't identify and inform you of what improvements can be made to improve shop floor productivity.

Machine monitoring differs because it will give you real-time, actionable shop floor data such as:

  • Top 5 downtimes, per factory, cell or machine
  • Pareto plots
  • Average setup time per part
  • Downtimes and machine active times per work order

This information can be used to take decisions based on fact and not opinion. I

Which food manufacturing machines can use FourJaw?

FourJaw's advanced machine monitoring solution is designed for use on all types of manufacturing equipment and is suitable for factories of all sizes.

In the food industry, our analytics software is frequently utilised on:

  • Grinding
  • Inspection
  • Conveyor
  • Heat Sealing
  • Injector
  • Packaging
  • Weighing

Learn more about CNC machine monitoring with FourJaw.