These days, kitchen manufacturer Kvik is experiencing a huge appetite for its kitchens, which are sold in more than 180 stores in 13 countries. To keep up with the demand and in the quest to reduce CO2 emissions from production in Vildbjerg, Kvik has invested heavily in machinery and technology in recent years, and a solution for collecting data in production is the latest addition.

Six months ago, Kvik implemented a cloud-based software solution - Opticloud - from OptiPeople, which has so far been connected to six out of twelve sites, and new measurements show that Kvik is already seeing benefits from using the solution:

- We are constantly working to optimize our production, which is why we started working with OptiPeople, as we wanted more accurate and valid data from our plants. First of all, to get a more accurate insight into the causes of stops. Secondly, to use that data to plan a better machine maintenance process to minimize the time a machine is not producing , says Stefan Lindell, LEAN Project Manager at Kvik - and he adds

- Now that we have been using Opticloud, OptiPeople's software solution and platform, for six months, it was time to measure the preliminary results. For a month, we measured stops and production time on the systems, and we can see that in a relatively short time we already have about 50% fewer service hours on our machines with 1-shift or fewer shifts, while on machines with 3-shifts we have managed to minimize service by about 40 hours per year, resulting in 40 hours of extra production.

A solution with more options

Specifically, Kvik has managed to create the results by, among other things, switching from performing service based on a fixed time interval to now doing it after a specific number of production hours. And according to OptiPeople's CEO, Stefan Jensen, this is a move that many manufacturing companies will benefit from:

- Kvik has taken action on several fronts to optimize operations at their production and packaging facilities, and one of the main points is that they have switched to performing service when a machine has been running for a certain number of hours - rather than just after a certain amount of time. This is an option with Opticloud, which can measure a machine's production time and based on this can send an email to an Outlook calendar, after which a day is automatically booked in the calendar seven days ahead , he says and elaborates:

- We see many companies that either don't do preventive maintenance and wait for breakdowns to happen or base it on time. But when you have machines like Kvik's that don't run all the time and others that run more than expected, it doesn't make sense to base service on time intervals - in that case, you risk having a system at a standstill, which is both expensive and inappropriate if you are also challenged by high demand.

At Kvik, Opticloud is still new, and according to Stefan Lindell, the solution has great potential - for example, to collect data as a basis for investments and to reduce CO2 emissions from production:

- It takes time to introduce new technology into production, and we still have six plants that need to be connected to the solution. In the longer term, in addition to optimizing operations, we also see opportunities in using data from individual machines to make decisions about investing in new equipment, while we would also like to use Opticloud to record energy consumption, which we can use in our sustainability work," he concludes.