Savola Foods: IoT and the benefits of smart manufacturing
Data insights. Better-informed decisions. Improved performance.
Savola foods collaborated with Deloitte Engineering to implement smart factory solutions, leveraging IoT and cloud technology to optimize production processes and drive efficiency.
Savola Foods is an innovator in the food industry in the Middle East, making non-hydrogenated and immunity boosting edible oils, as well as exploring emerging technologies such as robotic automation and cutting-edge digitization of manufacturing processes. Facing pressure from a competitive market, the company was looking for ways to increase market share, efficiency, product quality, and customer satisfaction.
Savola Foods leads the way
Savola Foods is keen to make a positive impact on society and health, in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030. With that in mind, they reached out to Deloitte Engineering to introduce smart factory manufacturing solutions, incorporating technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud into their operations to capture digital data for production assets / processes and turn it into actionable insights.
Savola Foods wanted to create a connected production facility (consistent with industry standards and Industry 5.0 principles), beginning with the implementation of a series of smart factory pilots. They approached Deloitte Engineering to help develop and implement solutions that would drive value to be scaled to their production network in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Deloitte difference
Our cross-functional Deloitte Engineering team piloted digital solutions by baselining performance to identify process bottlenecks and critical business challenges that could be addressed by real-time asset monitoring and a digital maintenance collaboration platform.
- A tailor-made Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT platform based on Deloitte’s Smart Factory Fabric accelerator was configured to capture real-time data, captured from I/Os, PLCs, and a newly deployed SCADA for connected equipment and sensors integrated to the AWS cloud. This enabled the team to co-develop features and dashboards to both visualize operational KPIs and provide insights into production process bottlenecks and performance.
- Key process and machine parameters were captured, with business rules applied to calculate real-time Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) and generate alerts in case of abnormalities. The platform supported raising maintenance tickets proactively, enabling key stakeholders to address issues more efficiently and with more certainty.
- Digital libraries of asset manuals, equipment drawings, and spare parts lists were developed to allow technicians ease of access to information, improving the repair time.
The cloud provided the necessary infrastructure and computing power to process and visualize all the high velocity data that was being captured, allowing Savola to work faster and with more accuracy than before.
Realizing business value
With this solution, Savola Foods was able to reduce downtime associated with breakdowns, improve mean time to repair assets, and improve the mean time between failure of assets.
Real-time data visualization and alerts allowed for data-to-insight and insights-to-action from management teams and operations on the production floor.
A foundational IoT platform was developed with the potential to build predictive maintenance models to improve performance. In addition, a smart factory roadmap was established to deploy and scale technologies to Savola Foods’ broader production network.
About Savola Foods
Savola Foods, which owns operations in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan, manages a broad portfolio of B2C food brands. Mainly household staples such as edible oil, sugar, pasta and ghee, many of the brands are market leaders in multiple countries. With the aim to safeguard future growth levels, Savola Foods devised a detailed roadmap to guide the organization toward higher-value product categories and markets with untapped potential.
