/ Beverage Giant /

With 150 breweries spanning the globe, this beverage giant is the crowned heavyweight of brewing. But beer domination doesn’t come without its challenges. Maintaining high quality, streamlining production, and fueling profits demand more. For North American operations, this was becoming increasingly difficult as its custom manufacturing execution system (MES) software was nearing obsolescence. 

Back in the 1980s, the brewers’ MES was technologically advanced, but four decades later, it lacks the features needed to support today’s modern challenges. This older technology was also increasingly expensive to support, and finding developers with the skills to work on it was a significant challenge.

The beverage company embarked on a mission to revolutionize their data collection and management approach using modern digital technologies including AVEVA PI System and Parsec TrakSYS software.

Gray AES earned their trust through a decade of successful automation, controls, HMI, and digital transformation projects. Our relationship, paired with our extensive experience with both of their selected software platforms, made us the natural go-to partner for implementing the new MES solution. 

Listening Lead to Results

Gray AES kicked off the project by looking at features of newer MES systems recently deployed at the company’s plants in South America and Africa, as well as the legacy North American system. Working closely with their operators and engineers, we decided which features were essential, which were wish list items, and which were unnecessary. Even though we knew our customer well, we entered this project like we always do, with our ears open, leaving any preconceived plans at the door. The value of this approach was made clear early on: the beverage behemoth needed to be able to group orders, which helps them run more continuously. Their old system was capable of doing this, but their new system was not. 

The company also needed their new MES to provide insight into what’s working well at each site so they could implement best practices across plants, increasing efficiency and product consistency. With an MES that monitors consistent parameters across their North American zones, they can ensure they are sticking to production specs. If there's a deviation between plants, they’re armed with data to uncover the reasons. But that's not where the journey ends; the company’s new MES lets them communicate with, and compare data from, other facilities outside of North America, to ensure brand consistency across the globe. 

Beyond this beverage giant’s trusted TrakSYS implementation partner for North America, we also developed integrations with their historian, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, warehouse management system (WMS), master scheduling, and control systems.

Stepping Up to Change

The MES was a multi-year project, and during that stretch, the primary project sponsors and managers at our customer’s company changed several times. While that presented some communication and project continuity hurdles, we’re always prepared and up for the challenge. Our meticulous note-taking captured important details, key decisions, and user stories via Azure DevOps. When new managers step in, this historical documentation gets them up to speed in a snap.