A Quebecois cheese producer cited as an example.

Knowing how to incorporate new technological realities to your packaging chain is knowing how to take advantage of opportunities.

A QUEBECOIS CHEESE PRODUCER CITED AS AN EXAMPLE.

Damafro, a home grown comapny, is one of the most important cheese producers in Canada. Damafro currently controls 40% of the domestic soft cheese market throughout the country.

With such a varied cheese production, the packaging and labelling process is no small matter to manage, especially since the majority of the tasks are done manually, requiring many manipulation on the part of the employees.

Two separate chains are used, each processing only one product at a time. This requires strenuous coordination when choosing which product to wrap and label since the time to market for any given product is relatively long. Furthermore, no data is gathered about the weight of the products, and no data gathering is performed during the entire procedure.

Suddenly, three new parameters complicated the situation even further!

Supermarkets required the cutting up of the larger cheeses, such as bries and camemberts, to be done in the Damafro plant instead of in the supermarket as it had always been done in the past; multiplying by 30 the quantity of products that required wrapping and labelling.
New regulations on providing nutritional information became mandatory, and the two-inch-wide label that had been previously used was no longer large enough to write all the new information required. Four-inch-wide labels that had to be folded on the side of the product had to be used, and Damafro was not equipped to do this efficiently.
The employees unionise, which increases the salary mass considerably.

To sum up, there are more products to wrap and package, more information to print on the labels, and Damafro has to decrease the number of employees on the packaging chain following the salary increases. Quite the challenge…

The IMS solution:

IMS was called upon to find a solution. Damafro knew what IMS can do. For years, IMS has been their supplier for anything involving labels and other types of equipment, such as printer applicators and multilingual scales.

Following an analysis of the situation and the evaluation of various alternatives, IMS implements an automated solution that considerably enhances the productivity of the packaging chain. From now on, three products can be treated simultaneously on one packaging line. A barcode scanner identifies the product so that the print and apply labelling system can automatically print and apply all the pertinent information: product name, nutritional information, quantity, weight, expiration date, etc. IMS’s in-house software, pControl, captures all the data, and creates various reports, production efficiency and volume by shift, production per lot, as well colligating other essential information that assures optimal resource management. The advantages that this solution provides for Damafro are considerable:

Labour costs are divided by half and production is multiplied by two, even considering the complexity of Damafro’s operations.
Three different products can now be treated at the same time on one line compared to only one previously, which permits Damafro to remove en entire packaging line, saving them precious space.
The solution now allows Damafro to store information and create production reports. Cheese yield production calculations are now fully automatic.

To read the entire case study, click here.