Invensys Operations Management today announced the winners of its annual Invensys Operations Management OPEN competition. Contestants were nominated for their innovative use of Invensys products and solutions to generate significant business results in four categories of Operational Excellence: Asset Excellence, Control Excellence, People Excellence and Environment and Safety Excellence.
The winners were selected based on the business results they achieved using an Invensys Operations Management product or solution and were recognized during the company's OpsManage'11 series of global industry events that kicked off in Paris and Nashville, Tenn. Entries were judged by industry experts, trade magazine editors, industry analysts and the Invensys Operations Management executive team.
The 2011 Invensys Operations Management OPEN winner for Asset Excellence is Frito-Lay of Plano, Texas. The Control Excellence award went to Arkema of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The People Excellence award was given to Campbell's Soup of Camden, N.J., and Eskom of Johannesburg, South Africa, was recognized for Environment and Safety Excellence.
"Marking the seventeenth year of the OPEN award program, our customers continue to generate impressive business results working with Invensys and our partner ecosystem," said Mark Davidson, vice president, central marketing operations, Invensys Operations Management. "Originally established as the Wonderware OPEN, we expanded the contest two years ago to include the complete InFusion Enterprise Control System portfolio, which includes all product brands from Invensys Operations Management, along with open integration to virtually any other system or application. As always, this competition gives our partners, clients, potential customers and the industry in general an opportunity to recognize thought leadership in action. These organizations are leading the way for their respective industries in the acceleration of operational excellence and the associated creation of sustainable business value."
With more than $10 billion in annuals sales, Frito-Lay is one of the largest divisions of PepsiCo and the leading convenient foods manufacturer in North America. It controls 65% of the savory snack market and its 12 brands each have annual North America sales of more than $100 million. Four of those are "mega-brands," each having more than $1 billion in annual sales. Frito-Lay uses the Avantis enterprise asset management solution from Invensys Operations Management to execute an inclusive asset optimization strategy that enhanced its dynamic changeover process, reduced downtime and improved cash flow.
"Before we had a shift occupation in which we could produce about 47%, and after we implemented the PDA wireless solution, we went up to 75%, almost a 25% increase in production," said Mike Spronkmans, manager of technical operations at Arkema Rotterdam.
Campbell's Soup is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world. Every year, Campbell's Soup sells almost 2 billion cans of soup, accounting for more than 60% of the U.S. wet soup market. More than 80% of all U.S. households, nearly 100 million homes, purchase its soup every year. Campbell's Soup was recognized for People Excellence because of the exemplary work performed at its Napoleon, Ohio, and Sacramento, Calif., plants. These projects used Invensys' Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile solution, which enabled Campbell's Soup to save paper and time, increase employee engagement and empower packaging operations personnel to control production more tightly for superior taste and quality.
"Campbell Soup quickly saw the Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile solution as a way to drive process improvements, increase efficiency around autonomous maintenance activities and help streamline the manual data collection activities of its production staff," said Darren Kline, vice president, marketing and business development, Wonderware North, a key member of Invensys Operations Management's global ecosystem of partners. "We collaborated with Campbell Soup to select the best business case and then worked with them to implement the solution at two production facilities, helping to ensure that the technology meets all of their stated needs. The combination of their expertise on how best to apply this tool to their work processes, combined with our expertise on the best application of the product, proved to be a great combination for empowering Campbell Soup's operations staff to deliver improved business results."
Eskom Holdings Limited, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, won the Environment and Safety Excellence Award. Eskom generates, transmits and distributes electricity to industrial, mining, commercial, agricultural and residential customers and redistributors. It generates approximately 95% of the electricity used in South Africa and approximately 45% of the electricity used in all of Africa. Eskom created an enterprise-wide Environmental Monitoring System using Invensys Operations Management's ArchestrA System Platform, the open integration and collaboration platform inside the InFusion Enterprise Control System. The system is helping Eskom meet generation contract obligations, sustain revenues and, more importantly, operate within environmental limits to avoid non-compliance penalties.
"This project proves once again that the ArchestrA System Platform can add tremendous value to any organization. The flexibility of the solution enabled us to connect to multiple source systems and applications so we can deliver critical, real-time decision-making information to the highest levels of the company," said Gerhard Greeff of Bytes Systems Integration, the certified system integrator who executed the project at Eskom.
