Showcase of our Success

Case Study

Ice cream perfection from cow to cone

Ben & Jerry’s

excellencemeets the

“By utilizing InfinityQS® to implement SPC and Six Sigma best practices across our manufacturing processes, Ben & Jerry’s will continue to identify opportunities for cost savings and ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction. The result is the perfect pint for our customers.”

Ben & Jerry’s is a Burlington, Vermont-based corporation, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unilever. The company produces a wide variety of super-premium ice cream and ice cream novelties, using high-quality ingredients including milk and cream from family farmers who do not treat their cows with the synthetic hormone rBGH, eggs from hens on Certified Humane cage-free farms, and brownies from Greyston Bakery, a social enterprise in Yonkers, New York.

Founded in 1978 by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the company now has just over 500 employees and nearly 700 Scoop Shops worldwide, with manufacturing operations at facilities in Waterbury and St. Albans, Vermont, as well as some production lines at the Unilever plant in Henderson, Nevada.

Offering beloved flavours such as Phish Food, Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey, and more, Ben & Jerry’s products are distributed in over 35 countries in supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, franchise Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops, restaurants, and other venues.

The challenge

Ben & Jerry’s maintains the strictest standards of product quality to ensure its customers get the full flavor experience each time they enjoy a pint or cone of Vermont’s finest ice cream. This attention to detail can be seen from “cow to cone,” as the company says, meaning that each step of its supply chain—from suppliers and distributors to manufacturing operations—must comply with the company’s three-part mission statement, which emphasizes product quality, economic reward, and a commitment to the community.

Focusing on its manufacturing operations, Ben & Jerry’s maintains quality procedures for key performance indicators (KPIs) that ensure consistent product quality for every pint produced.

Nina King, Quality Supervisor, Ben & Jerry’s

TM

Ben & Jerry’s Case Study

Manufacturing Intelligence identified opportunities for improvement in run capabilities and raw material usage.

Decreased raw materials variation created cost savings.

Ability to tighten specification limits resulted in even higher quality products.

Advance reporting capabilities generated time savings and improved efficiency.

To track quantitative data, the ice cream manufacturer had previously been using a paper-based system, which was proving to be cumbersome for operators and data administrators alike. Operators would take individual readings and calculate an average of those readings to plot on a paper chart. Quality assurance personnel would then perform manual calculations to compute trends and create reports.

This system was not only slow and inflexible, but also costly in terms of man hours required for calculation and analysis. Ben & Jerry’s needed a fast and reliable way to collect and analyze the vital quality data of its super-premium ice cream products.

“What sets Ben & Jerry’s apart from our competitors is not only our insistence on high-quality ingredients, but also the extra and unique flavours we use to create a euphoric customer experience. Ensuring the final product reflects the passion and quality that we put into each pint required a quality solution that emphasized the same attention to details that we do.” said Melissa Corcia, Quality Manager, Ben & Jerry’s.

The solution

Ben & Jerry’s decided to deploy an InfinityQS enterprise quality solution to streamline its quality control procedures. Powered by a Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis engine, the system easily automates data collection and integration from terminals on the shop floor, while its real-time monitoring and analysis functions enable the quality department to acquire Manufacturing Intelligence by tracking variability across each production line.

Because each line has a different run capability, Ben & Jerry’s created run charts within the quality system based on Six

Sigma data collected on the plant floor to determine variations specific to each individual line. By measuring, monitoring, and controlling four main product attributes—weight, volume, air addition, and inclusion amounts—as the pints come off the production lines, quality teams can work with production to quickly make adjustments in real time as products or processes approach specification limits.

Quality teams can also compare the data acquired through visual cut-ups—a process where a pint is cut into quadrants to ensure the proper amount of inclusions appear in each serving—to the run capability data in the InfinityQS system to identify the source of any variability in inclusion or variegate distribution and volume as identified during the cut-up.

The results

Since implementing the InfinityQS quality solution, Ben & Jerry’s has used Manufacturing Intelligence to identify instances to improve run capability and raw material usage. Because high-quality ingredients are typically high priced (up to $800 for a single barrel of swirl), the ability to fine tune processes with more precise specification limits results in less raw material variation, increased cost savings, and a higher quality product for the consumer.

Furthermore, with InfinityQS’ advanced reporting suite, the ice cream manufacturer is saving a significant amount of time by eliminating manual calculations and time-consuming report creation. Reports now run in seconds as opposed to the eight to 10 hours that quality assurance personnel previously spent calculating data. Operators have dramatically reduced paper usage and can better focus on improving production processes and efficiency.

Welcome to the excellence l∞p

Enterprise visibility

Operational insight

Global transform

ation

InfinityQS International, Inc. | Washington DC | Seattle | London | Beijing | Delhi | www.infinityqs.com

Copyright © InfinityQS International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Case Study

Unifying real-time visibility across 26 factories

“It is ultimately easier for the operator. Even with the minimal computer skills many of the operators had in the beginning, the overwhelming consensus is that they prefer using InfinityQS over a paper system.”

Nestlé Waters, the world’s leading bottled water company, has built a solid reputation on the quality and purity of its products. Established in 130 countries, with a portfolio of 72 brands, Nestlé Waters continues to meet consumer needs by keeping its wide variety of products flowing through strong distribution channels.

Nestlé Waters has 100 manufacturing sites operating in 38 countries. With 2007 sales of over $10 billion and a market share of 19.2%, Nestlé Waters has emerged as a substantial player in the flourishing bottled water market.

The challenge

Nestlé Waters had been using a cumbersome paper-based system to collect and analyze data. When issues arose that required immediate attention, Nestlé Waters’ quality engineers had to disrupt operators on the production line to retrieve the necessary data.

Nestlé Waters’ goal was to implement a system that would allow them to easily monitor, review, and trend real-time quality data. Additionally, Nestlé Waters needed to standardize on one solution across all of their facilities to complement their existing IT infrastructure. They were operating in both LAN and WAN environments and needed to maintain their IT framework.

Julie Chapman, Quality Systems Manager, Nestlé Waters

Nestlé Waters

excellencemeets the

TM

Nestlé Waters Case Study

Central SPC solution allows visibility of production processes across multiple factories.

Real-time visibility tools allow for more effective decision making.

Computerized data output eliminates need for manual documentation.

Reduction in manual documentation increases overall efficiency.

Real-time alarms with assignable cause and corrective action entries streamline quality control process.

The solution

After a thorough needs/analysis evaluation, Nestlé Waters determined that an InfinityQS® quality solution best satisfied their criteria for quality documentation and analysis.

The IT department played a vital role during all stages of the implementation. From an IT standpoint, the implementation focused on two separate manufacturing units: Retail Manufacturing and Home and Office Manufacturing. They spread the implementation across 16 Retail sites as well as eight Home and Office sites and integrated them with corporate headquarters.

Nestlé Waters Retail objectives were to:

› Upgrade all factories to the latest release› Organize the purchase of all the PCs required for the work

stations

› Image new PCs to the Nestlé standard and install InfinityQS› Ensure that the project leader had all necessary rights and

permissions to access the servers

Nestlé Waters Home and Office objectives were to:

› Format existing servers› Install SQL databases and InfinityQS on the servers› Purchase new PCs, image, put users in the user group, and

grant necessary permissions and access

As part of the organizational effort, IT planned hardware purchases in advance to ensure that servers were set up, racked, and usable prior to trial production runs.

On the shop floor, emphasis was put on location of the workstations to facilitate efficient and effective workflow.

The results

With an InfinityQS quality solution in place, Nestlé Waters now has real-time visibility over production processes—both within the individual sites and from the corporate level across 26 factories. By tracking trends in quality data, they are able to make more accurate and timely decisions about process improvements.

Nestlé Waters is using InfinityQS to review sampling frequency optimization and in-line monitoring as well as to track the following projects:

› Cap Torque and application analysis from retail factories,comparing different cap vendors

› Light-weight bottle initiative to optimize process andultimately reduce unnecessary full bottle testing

› Automatically capture air consumption process data, usinganalysis functions to optimize production processes

Other improvements have come at a practical level. “You can read the data rather than having to decipher the writing of 150 different people. The data is at your fingertips,” said Julie Chapman, Quality Systems Manager at Nestlé Waters.

Welcome to the excellence l∞p

Enterprise visibility

Operational insight

Global transform

ation

InfinityQS International, Inc. | Washington DC | Seattle | London | Beijing | Delhi | www.infinityqs.com

Copyright © InfinityQS International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Coty meetsthe excellence

Case Study

Coty eliminated overfill to save $270,000 with SPC Fill Height Project

“By incorporating an InfinityQS® quality solution into our plant-floor quality efforts, Coty has realized benefits across all parts of the value chain.”

Coty is a leader in the global beauty and fragrance industry. Founded in Paris in 1904 by Francois Coty, the company today exhibits innovation and a drive to quickly capture emerging trends, thereby creating enduring brands that speak to the aspirations and lifestyles of today’s consumers. The company boasts an annual revenue over $4 billion, is headquartered in New York City with offices in more than 30 countries, and employs 10,000 worldwide. Coty’s global manufacturing presence, including Research and Development Centers of Excellence and eight manufacturing facilities, is spread across locations in Europe, the United States, and China.

Driven by passion, creative freedom, and an entrepreneurial spirit, Coty has built a unique portfolio of beauty brands that have produced some of the strongest consumer franchises in history. The company’s products span three categories of fragrances, color cosmetics, and skin and body care, with adidas, Calvin Klein, OPI, philosophy, Chloé, Davidoff, Playboy, Rimmel, Marc Jacobs, and Sally Hansen comprising its top 10 brands.

The full product portfolio is sold through distribution channels that include upscale department stores, specialty retailers, upscale perfumeries and pharmacies, mass-market retailers, duty-free shops in airports and cities, QVC, and various e-commerce channels.

TM

Romina Colautti, Process Engineer Coty

The challenge

As part of continuous improvement efforts, Coty determined that its filling process was generating a higher level of waste than expected. This was due in part to some lines overfilling containers to ensure aesthetic fills were met, which led to higher expenses on supplies. Considering the price of some of the fill liquids, this was a significant opportunity to reduce overfill and save money.

However, the company did not have enough historical data on these lines, which meant that process engineers and quality professionals did not have sufficient information to truly understand the entire problem and develop a viable solution. In 2010, the manufacturing team at Coty’s Sanford, North Carolina, manufacturing facility turned to Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis to better understand scrap at the point of manufacture on its filling lines. As part of an SPC Fill Height Project, Coty wanted to determine ways to reduce liquid scrap and better understand its process capability.

The solution

Coty approached InfinityQS®, the global authority on Manufacturing Intelligence and enterprise quality, about implementing their proven Manufacturing Intelligence platform—powered by a centralized SPC analysis engine—at its Sanford facility.

Coty used InfinityQS’ tech support to help ensure the most effective deployment of the solution. The SPC Fill Height Project was incrementally implemented on 12 fragrance lines. The company set target amounts for every SKU (2,600 parts), control limits for each product and line combination (filling variation), and specification limits (min and max fill height levels). The process also included training for more than 100 users, from line operators and quality inspectors to managers and directors.

Coty found that it could easily analyze all necessary key performance indicators (KPIs) on control charts for easy interpretation and analysis. With the information it gathered, the company eliminated the need for overproduction of liquid to compensate for overfilling; identified special-cause variation vs. natural variation with real-time information about the process; and eliminated time-consuming, after-the-fact quality checks that did not add value.

“By incorporating InfinityQS’ solution into our plant floor quality efforts, Coty has realized benefits across all parts of the value chain—from quality professionals that experience unprecedented database accuracy, to executives seeing financial savings.” – Romina Colautti, Process Engineer for Coty

The results

In just two years, Coty has seen significant financial and resource savings with the implementation of InfinityQS. With an initial investment of $47,000, the carefully planned and executed projects have reduced variation, increased accuracy of set points, validated process capability, and reduced overfilling.

The SPC Fill Height Project specifically saved Coty more than $270,000 by eliminating overfilling by more accurately controlling fill heights. The project challenged the packaging design engineers to review bottle designs and ensure ideal liquid fill amounts without compromising the overhead space.

Because InfinityQS solutions fuel continuous improvement, this project is just the beginning for Coty. The company plans to continue to use the system’s real-time capabilities to achieve Manufacturing Intelligence for more projects that could include other lines with similar bottle types, and other product lines.

InfinityQS International, Inc. | Washington DC | Seattle | London | Beijing | Delhi | www.infinityqs.com

Copyright © InfinityQS International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Coty Case Study

Attained unprecedented database accuracy for quality professionals

Through SPC Fill Height Project, eliminated overfill to save $270,000

Realized more than $220,000 in ROI

Welcome to the excellence l∞pEnterprise visibility

Operational insight

Global transform

ation