Meeting the Agility Challenges of Fast-Moving CPG Production

In the dynamic world of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), where consumer preferences shift rapidly and raw material availability fluctuates, manufacturers face unique challenges in building, operating, and optimizing their producConclusiontion facilities. The push to balance economies of scale with market uncertainties, meet last-minute retailer orders, accommodate diverse product portfolios, and tackle data visibility hurdles necessitates a paradigm shift in manufacturing strategies.

Navigating Agility Hurdles in the Rapid CPG Sector

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers are constantly striving to align production with ever-changing consumer demands and market dynamics. The industry landscape is characterized by:

• Building larger facilities to achieve economies of scale while ensuring scalability for changing market volumes.
• Accelerated production cycles to fulfill last-minute retailer orders and minimize inventory costs.
• Increasing SKUs due to consumer demand for variety, resulting in smaller batch sizes and frequent changeovers.
• Data visibility challenges across multiple sites hinder performance improvement efforts.
  Why Change the Paradigm? Increase Operational Performance and Flexibility

As the World Economic Forum's report "Digital Transformation Powering the Great Reset 2020" indicates, companies that embrace digital transformation achieve significant growth. In the context of CPG production, real-time visibility is crucial for enhancing operational performance and flexibility. The ability to swiftly adapt to changing consumer preferences, streamline production cycles, and optimize resource utilization becomes paramount.

EcoStruxure Automation Expert: Enabling Agile Manufacturing

The solution lies in embracing agile manufacturing practices, allowing manufacturers to:

• Responsively meet consumer demands by increasing flexibility in production.
• Efficiently manage materials, quality, and traceability.
• Gain real-time visibility into machine, process, line, and plan performance.
• Optimize resource usage, boosting throughput and yield while reducing waste.
• Building Agile Manufacturing on a Robust Architecture

Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure platform offers a transformative approach to manufacturing operations by ensuring seamless integration and connectivity across devices, edge control, and cloud and analytics technology levels. By synchronizing control and communication between assets and facilitating data sharing with analytical applications, EcoStruxure architecture empowers manufacturers with enhanced velocity, variability, visibility, and profitability across manufacturing sites.

Control Layer Optimization and Technological Evolution

Schneider Electric's journey towards agile manufacturing includes the transition from hardware-based to software-based automation solutions. EcoStruxure Automation Expert, alongside ProLeiT and AVEVA, exemplifies this shift. This hardware-independent, software-based control solution enables faster programming, IT/OT convergence, and true interoperability with IT systems, making plug-and-produce automation a reality.

EcoStruxure Automation Expert: A Game-Changing Evolution

EcoStruxure Automation Expert redefines industrial automation by decoupling software from hardware and offering an open engineering philosophy. This universal automation approach empowers engineers and operators with increased flexibility, native object orientation, and simplified system deployment. Field tests reveal that EcoStruxure Automation Expert outperforms other automation systems in terms of development speed, diagnostics, and systems agility.

Conclusion: Get Started with Universal Automation

In the face of ever-evolving consumer demands and market uncertainties, CPG manufacturers must embrace universal automation solutions like  EcoStruxure to achieve agility, flexibility, and profitability. Schneider Electric's commitment to openness, flexibility, and sustainability positions EcoStruxure as a game-changing platform that empowers the CPG industry to overcome agility challenges and thrive in a fast-paced landscape.