Agropur Cooperative

Agropur Cooperative's Don Mills facility processes over 1.5 billion gallons of milk annually, operating under the continuous throughput demands typical of large-scale dairy manufacturing. Despite this scale, the facility had no automated visibility into machine performance — operators relied entirely on manual data collection that consumed over 2,500 hours per year. Legacy hardware nearing end of life compounded the risk, leaving the team without reliable asset tracking or performance baselines. Without continuous monitoring, production losses were invisible: downtime went unattributed, inefficiencies accumulated undetected, and the facility lacked the data foundation needed for any structured continuous improvement program.

Agropur partnered with Rockwell Automation to deploy an integrated suite of FactoryTalk manufacturing intelligence tools at the Don Mills facility. FactoryTalk AssetCentre replaced aging asset management processes with automated tracking and version control for control system assets. FactoryTalk Metrics introduced OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) monitoring, capturing machine states and downtime events automatically across production lines. FactoryTalk VantagePoint unified the data streams into centralized dashboards and reports accessible to operations and management teams. Together, these tools replaced manual clipboard-based data collection with a real-time operational intelligence platform, integrating directly with existing control infrastructure to minimize disruption during rollout.

The most significant finding was that OEE analytics revealed 33+ hours of previously undetected annual production time — capacity that had been lost to untracked micro-stoppages and inefficiencies. This eliminated the business case for capital investment in additional equipment. Additional measured outcomes:

• 2,500 hours/year of manual data collection work eliminated through automated monitoring
• 48 hours/year of system backup labor reduced through AssetCentre automation
• 30% reduction in lubrication consumption, driven by trend analysis identifying over- and under-lubrication patterns

Beyond the numbers, operations teams gained a shared, real-time view of facility performance — shifting conversations from reactive troubleshooting to data-driven improvement.

• OEE monitoring in dairy and food processing facilities consistently surfaces hidden production capacity — often 30+ hours annually — without requiring capital expenditure on new equipment.
• Replacing manual data collection with automated systems delivers compounding returns: labor hours are recovered while data quality and consistency improve simultaneously.
• Maintenance material consumption (lubricants, consumables) can be meaningfully reduced through trend-based analysis once sensor and historian data is in place.
• Integrating asset management with performance monitoring on a unified platform makes it easier to correlate equipment health with production losses.
• Start with visibility before optimization — establishing accurate OEE baselines is a prerequisite for any meaningful continuous improvement program.