Portola Packaging orders Barco Manufacturing Execution System
Blackburn, Lancashire, UK, 30 September 2005
Portola Packaging have ordered a Barco PLANTMASTER system to provide production monitoring and scheduling for their Doncaster plant, which manufactures caps and closures for non-carbonated beverages in the dairy, fresh juice and water markets.
“As our production became more varied and complex, so did the manual forms that the operators had to complete. Consequently, we couldn’t rely on them because they weren’t accurate,” Mr Kirkland pointed out. “It was particularly difficult to monitor the secondary equipment, where we had more breakdowns. We knew that our Overall Equipment Effectiveness - OEE could definitely be improved by having the information in real-time and being able to redirect the labour.
“Although we looked at other manufacturers’ solutions, our Plant Manager (Stuart Barber), who is managing this project, had previous first hand experience of using the Barco system and regarded it as the number one brand,” he maintained. “Added to this, we wanted the convenience of a proven wireless system that was easy to install.
The Barco system will initially monitor 48 machines, which cover a mix of injection moulding machines ranging from 160 to 400 tonnes, producing a wide variety of caps and closures, plus secondary operating machines including foil inserting, mechanical assembly and labelling equipment.
The PLANTMASTER scheduling module will also be linked in to Portola’s existing ERP system.
About Barco
Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company (Euronext: BAR; Reuters: BARBt.BR; Bloomberg: BAR BB).
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