Summer Garden Food Manufacturing

Summer Garden Food Manufacturing, producing up to 100,000 cases of sauces weekly in two 12-hour shifts, was missing downtime that it couldn't track. Kettle yields weren't equaling run times, and the company couldn't identify the causes without detailed granular tracking.

Summer Garden installed the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform in late 2022 to start tracking downtime at machine level rather than on paper. The scalable platform allowed them to start with one machine and build out incrementally.

Previously invisible downtime was identified and quantified, enabling targeted improvement actions. The company achieved improved OEE and better kettle yield-to-runtime correlation. Scalable implementation allowed expansion as confidence in the platform grew.

• Smart manufacturing platforms reveal hidden downtime that paper-based systems structurally cannot capture
• Starting with a single machine deployment allows food manufacturers to learn the platform before enterprise rollout
• Kettle yield monitoring in sauce production requires machine-level downtime visibility that only digital platforms can provide