and Europe and selling through its website and shops.
reliable source of vegan chocolates, Friars began making its own. “The market was there, but the lack of availability was hindering sales growth, so we recruited a reputable chocolatier and invested in some machinery to start manufacturing,” continued Michael. Before starting out on its digitalisation journey, Friars had three chocolatiers producing up to 30kg of chocolates a day – 6,000kg annually – using an entirely manual process. However, scaling up production had become a challenge. “Due to the handmade nature of the product, it was not scale it using the same methods and techniques,’ explained Michael. “Without a consistent supply of quality chocolates manufactured by ourselves, we were unlikely to realise our ambitions.”
The solution
With the support of Made Smarter, Friars adopted a continuous tempering machine which is used to ensure the molten chocolate is the correct temperature.
The moulds for the chocolate are fed into a loader which connects into a SELMI One moulds with chocolate and then feeds it along a 4m cooling tunnel. The chocolate is then demoulded manually and enrobed with chocolate before being manually decorated and refrigerated. The one-shot machine ensures quality consistency of the whole process – from the thickness of the chocolate each chocolate, reducing defects and waste to negligible amounts.
“The human element is at the start and the end of the process, making up the recipe and machinery will replace the manual, repetitive, time consuming and sometimes painful The new technology enables the team to produce up to 250kg per day – seven times more than was previously possible. By reducing the labour involved in the manufacturing process, 1kg of chocolate will be 2.5 times cheaper to produce, helping to productivity has allowed Friars not only to
KennedysConfection.com
Our
technology investment
will enable us to capitalise on new opportunities and react quickly to large orders, giving us a competitive advantage”
satisfy its own direct sales requirements but also to extend its routes to market. “In the past we would have had to turn down wholesale requests, due to our lack of capacity,” explained Michael. “Our technology investment will enable us to capitalise on new opportunities and react quickly to large orders, giving us a competitive advantage.”
Digitalisation advice
For other chocolatiers considering digitalising their production lines, Made Smarter offers the following advice. It says that the best way to think about a digital transformation is to consider it as a journey, with milestones and many different paths
which lead to the same destination. However, even within a single company this journey can mean different things to different people. themselves weighed down by paper-based processes, pre-digital technologies and traditional ways of working so it’s not possible to digital overnight. The key to success, according to Made Smarter, is to break down the digital journey into iterative steps to create a roadmap of how to get there. Prerequisites for a successful and sustainable journey will always start with preparation and this requires lean practices and principles to become ingrained within operations. Every process needs to be carefully looked at to identify bottlenecks and eliminate waste. Then it is possible to introduce the concept of continuous improvement, seeking better ways to do things and removing bad practices. This means you will avoid simply digitising poorly performing processes. Data is the lifeblood of digital transformation. Harnessing historical and existing data, and applying analytics, enables step accessing that data is digitisation – the process of taking analogue information and making it digital with software superseding paper-based processes.
With analogue information digitised, cloud computing can be used to embed a robust infrastructure to enable the integration of operations. For example, automation, including robotics and process control technologies, could be introduced to replace previously manual tasks. Sensors and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies can be deployed to connect machines across a factory shop Even legacy tools and machinery can be connected using smart sensors, and their data harnessed for insights. Crucially, the digital transformation journey is not a one-off event. It is a continuous process of learning, adaptation and evolution. It is also not just limited to sales and project management are more likely to be the primary focus of any digital investment before production.
Kennedy’s Confection October 2024 29
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