Towards a new generation industry: Unigrà digitizes its production plants with Deloitte Engineering and AWS
Introduction
It is often thought that industrial production and artisanal quality are opposites when it comes to the food industry. Yet, the careful use of cutting-edge technologies allows to increase productivity without affecting the quality of the products. This is demonstrated by Unigrà, for more than 50 years a leading group in the production and sale of cooking oils and fats, margarines and semi-finished products of the highest quality intended for food production and, in particular, for the confectionery industry. The group's goal is to evolve its production system and obtain Industry 4.0 certification, a certificate of compliance with the criteria established by the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy to access the tax benefits provided for by the Transition Plan 4.0, in order to increase the efficiency of the production process while maintaining the quality of the products.
From manual processes to next-generation connected systems
As part of a corporate strategy of continuous evolution and improvement of production processes, Unigrà has begun a process of digitization of its production lines. The existing plants were disconnected from the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system used by Unigrà, generating inefficiencies in the daily work not only of the production teams, but also of the company management. Both had to resort to manual data entry into the ERP system, which increased the risk of errors, inconsistencies, and delays in processing information. The lack of real-time visibility of data from plants made it difficult to track raw material and energy consumption by production lines, complicating the company's ability to make quick decisions or respond promptly to any unforeseen events. Moreover, the absence of real-time reports made it very difficult to analyze the performance of the plants, impacting the ability to identify areas for improvement, optimize the use of resources and pursue the sustainability goals set by Unigrà.
In collaboration with Deloitte and AWS, Unigrà has decided to address these issues by embarking on a digital transformation journey, with the aim of achieving the operational efficiencies made possible by the latest generation of connected systems.
The focal point of this project is the integration between the company's ERP system, hosted by SAP, and the production plants. The goal is to allow Unigrà to collect information from the machinery in real time, in order to constantly visualize production trends and the quality of the final product. The main challenge lies precisely in the ability to integrate the various systems – SAP, production plants, Artemis, LiteMES and AWS Cloud – to communicate in order to ensure maximum control over production plants, where even a minimal variation in the temperature of the raw material can seriously compromise the quality of the final product.
"The goal of the project was the digitization and modernization of our production lines, to obtain Industry 4.0 certification and, in general, to improve our production processes. In fact, we realized that the disconnect between the ERP system and production processes generated serious inefficiencies such as the need for manual data entry, resulting in difficulty in tracking production data in real time and verifying resource consumption in a timely manner. These limitations made it difficult for us not only to optimize production, but also to obtain information on plant performance, preventing us from effectively controlling costs and making timely decisions"
– Antonio Nicoletti, Group CIO, Unigrà
The digital transformation designed by Deloitte Engineering and AWS
To mitigate the possible risks associated with digital transformation and quickly demonstrate the return on investment, Deloitte and Unigrà have agreed to begin with a pilot project, starting with the transformation of the butter production chain. This made it possible to address the main challenges related to the project while minimizing the negative impacts on the production process as a whole.
The project team focused on some main issues to be solved to achieve the objectives desired by Unigrà. The first was to connect different systems, each with its own logic, data formats, and specific nomenclatures. This required detailed planning and strong coordination between Deloitte, AWS, and Unigrà, in order to map and transform the data to make it reliable and usable by all the systems involved.
The second step was to address the needs of the different departments involved, to design dashboards and interfaces that could really work for the final users. Throughout the project, Deloitte organized workshops and interviews with employees involved in the different areas – quality control, plant management, maintenance, research and development – to understand what data they really needed and how they would use it in their daily work. Based on these inputs, the solution was co-built with end users, for example by customizing dashboards to easily show the most relevant information and gradually improving the system thanks to user feedback. Finally, Deloitte was responsible for organizing training activities on the new solution and supporting users both during the go-live and in the first months of use, so that people felt comfortable using the new tools and the new system could be aligned to the needs of their daily work.
The third focus of the project was data security and governance. Since the system manages corporate data in a Cloud environment, the solution has been designed to ensure maximum robustness and adherence to AWS best practices, in order to protect sensitive data from external attacks and possible system failures.
These considerations have converged into a scalable and cloud-native architecture capable of integrating Unigrà's SAP ERP system with the production area, using Deloitte's ARTEMIS platform, based on AWS Industrial IoT services.
ARTEMIS allows end-to-end integration between ERP and production plants, allowing production orders to be sent from SAP to individual machines and at the same time collect data from equipment (such as quantities, waste, downtime), which are sent back to SAP to have a full picture of the production process.
The capabilities offered by AWS Cloud have been critical. With AWS IoT Greengrass, the solution can process data close to the machinery to react faster and reduce data transfer costs; while AWS IoT SiteWise manages cloud data storage and analysis, organizing data from machines to ensure scalability and speed in data management and processing.
Finally, the solution implemented a LiteMES system, instead of a traditional MES. This approach has created a more flexible and cost-effective execution layer than traditional solutions, supporting real-time execution and allowing operators to monitor processes and react quickly to anomalies.
"Constant monitoring of data will certainly help us in optimizing the process; to better understand the use of available resources and reduce the risk of machine downtime."
– Sara Alberini, R&D Manager, Olfood - Unigrà
A constantly evolving Smart Factory, based on high-quality data
The project has made it possible to create a control tower capable of providing Unigrà with maximum visibility by connecting the ERP system with the machinery used in the production processes.
In just two months, the project was delivered, allowing Unigrà to obtain Industry 4.0 certification
The implementation of the pilot project on the butter production line showed significant adoption across different business functions, which reported significant benefits, including increased data usability and improved ability to better supervise the production process. The solution allows Unigrà to have complete visibility of its production processes, centralized access to ERP and production plant data and automatic tracking of energy and raw material consumption, to allow the company to make strategic decisions in an informed and timely manner.The solution also allows the expansion of Unigrà's Smart Factory, for example by implementing a predictive maintenance system to minimize machine downtime or to further optimize the production process and resource allocation.
Thanks to the new Industry 4.0 system created by Deloitte on AWS cloud, Unigrà will be able to increase its production, control efficiency even more widely and cover new customers and new markets, without sacrificing the very high quality that characterizes their products.
