Clients
Companies across a range of sectors rely on Flowtech to digitise processes, manage operations and transform industrial data into faster and more accurate decisions.
Caxamar
CLIENT
Caxamar was founded in 1989 and specialises in the trade and processing of deep-frozen dried and rehydrated cod. Over the years, the company has grown and has been forced to eliminate intermediary costs by focusing strongly on competitive pricing. Consequently, in 1998 it built an industrial estate in Casal dos Frases, Ourém, where it became possible to control the entire production process.
CHALLENGE
One of Caxamar’s main challenges was to keep its warehouse control and management up to date, as well as ensuring traceability – which enables the company to know where a particular product is in the supply chain – and optimising processes and products.
SOLUTION
Flow Manufacturing was the solution found to resolve Caxamar’s problem. Through the implementation of Flow M, it became possible to monitor the entire production process, logistics and quality management systems on a minute-by-minute basis.
RESULTS
At Caxamar, the entire traceability process is currently carried out in a matter of seconds, making it possible to monitor all the information that is vital to managers’ day-to-day work. This flexibility helps free up more time to allocate resources to the most important tasks. There is also greater accuracy and speed in retrieving data, enabling faster analysis and decision-making, which helps to motivate staff who interact with the system on a daily basis.
Mistolin
Testimonial from Luís Catela – Chief Operating Officer
"Knowing exactly what the unit production cost is, what the available installed capacity is, what the response times are to customer requirements, and how to optimise available resources is essential for the management of a production facility. At Mistolin, all of this has been achieved using Flow." - Luís Catela, Chief Operating Officer of the MSTN Group
CLIENT
Mistolin is Portugal’s largest private-label products company and the leading manufacturer of detergents for the professional sector, a sector known for its exacting high quality standards. The company holds a number of certifications, notably in the areas of Quality, the Environment, Health and Safety at Work, and Social Responsibility. Mistolin is strongly committed to R&D – Research & Development – and holds two patents: one in the field of degreasers and the other in surface treatment. Mistolin is part of the MSTN Group, comprising 30 business units operating in 25 countries. The group operates across seven business areas and employs around 500 staff.
CHALLENGE
In the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, companies are now facing a new paradigm of digital transformation. A company that has adapted to the challenges of Industry 4.0 ensures a high degree of integration between its systems and information flows across departments and business areas, making it flexible and ready to respond to market demands. Competing in a highly demanding market, Mistolin recognised the need to invest in technological modernisation in order to ensure process optimisation and enable holistic management of the entire company. In terms of production management processes, it has become essential to obtain real-time data from the shop floor, available at any time and from any location.
SOLUTION
To ensure access to production data across all its production sites, Mistolin has implemented Flow Manufacturing, which enables the management of every stage of the production process in real time, ensuring that the production manager has all the data required to manage the production chain more effectively.
RESULTS
With the Flow production management solution, there has been a “increase in precision and process control”. With direct access to production data from all industrial units, regardless of their location, Mistolin is able to monitor every stage of the production process in real time. This is a major asset for the business, as it enables the company to adjust processes and respond to market changes whenever necessary, as well as supporting decision-making based on accurate data, which represents a clear advantage for the company’s managers.
Tété
TESTIMONIAL FROM JOÃO AMARO – FINANCE AND MARKETING
"The implementation of Flow M has enabled us not only to manage traceability in real time, but also to access information in an integrated manner. Equally important was the digitisation of a number of paper-based records which, due to their nature and complexity, compromised the reliability of analysis.
The software’s intuitive and simple user interface is also a major asset. We have managed to make access to Flow M available to everyone, from quality and production managers right down to operators. Consequently, at every stage of the processes, those carrying them out report on their work, which helps them feel motivated and more accountable for their tasks.
When it comes to managing and analysing production costs, Flow M also proves to be a very useful tool."
- João Amaro, Finance and Marketing at Tété
CLIENT
Tété is a Portuguese dairy company founded in 1960. Based in Loures, Tété exports its products – fresh cheeses, mature cheeses, curd cheese and butter – to Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Mozambique and the United States. The company processes between 20,000 and 30,000 litres of milk a day and employs 36 people.
CHALLENGE
One of the challenges facing the food industry is the implementation of a system that ensures the traceability of the entire production process, in order to meet technical and legal requirements. Given that, at Tété, the milk used for cheese production comes from batches supplied by different producers, the challenge of traceability becomes even more complex. Consequently, it was extremely difficult to determine, in a timely manner, which batches of raw materials and by-products had been used in the production of each batch of the final product; it was also difficult to determine, at the same time, to which customers each batch had been allocated.
SOLUTION
Flow Manufacturing, based on the organisation of industrial flows within processes, has enabled shopfloor operators to use intuitive interfaces to link a batch of finished product to the batches of raw materials and intermediate products from which it was made. The management of industrial production organised into processes using Flow M technology makes it possible to carry out any type of traceability exercise, as well as ensuring that stock levels are verified in real time.
RESULTS
Currently, at Tété, a traceability check takes just seconds to complete. With Flow M, it is possible to immediately identify which batches of raw materials and by-products are incorporated into a given batch of finished product and which customers it was supplied to. In a process-based production management framework, the ability to demonstrate a traceability system to customers and authorities is just as important as the ability to detect quality issues in real time. Today, thanks to the control afforded by Flow M technology, Tété demonstrates to its customers that its production is safe and of high quality, thereby strengthening its marketing position.