Rogelio Demay: BIC, it’s an iconic brand, honors its past. We strongly believe it’s these core values that make this company up, but what I love is that besides its past, this company is continuously developing and embracing new technologies.
We are passionate about technology. We believe that the first ingredients for success, it’s people. So, in fact, I would say that the overall vision that we have with this system is everything about breaking the silos, technological and people silos and human silos, to bring all this - people, machines, systems, functions, altogether. You know, as what we call it at BIC, One BIC, it’s one team working, everybody together.
Dafni Vakasi: So, we started the project in early 2021. Our mission was to deploy MES to the factory of Bizerte in all 90 machines at various automation levels and 400 employees, which was a big task for us. It was the first pilot part that had such a big scale of change. So, the first step of the project was going into the shop floor and really seeing the way we do things with open eyes, really understanding the movements, even of the operator, what is he looking at, what information is needed from him. Then we looked at the existing systems, what are we looking to replace, what are we looking to improve, call this discovery – we’re really discovering the way we do things, we document everything, which is great, and then we go into finding the solutions.
Tasos Kampouris: PLEX MES is a solution with many benefits. It is very dynamic, very collaborative, and is easily accessible from everywhere, anywhere, and this gives us a lot of opportunities to work as one BIC from all over the continents, and it give us the solutions to many of the problems that production has. Live reporting is very, very important and vital. If you have to have live standards and every time you deviate or you’re out of standard, to have this easily accessible information at the moment that this is happening, it can give you very fast and accurate data. And having this data, it is very easy to identify and give the proper remedy to each problem.
Nadia Hajri: The team was excited to discover a new system. They had a good reaction because PLEX helps them to monitor and control. They have real time visibility of all production, KPIs, the result is displayed in all the areas.
Oussama Garci: Now with PLEX, you can make sure that the theory is a hundred percent matching the reality there. We started pushing to get all of the data is coming from PLEX because we already know that that data that is coming from PLEX is accurate when we compare it to the data coming from spreadsheets or Excel. So, having very fresh data will give you the chance to be more reactive to the problems, because problems are always happening, and you have to be ready in order to put remedies there and to get back to the standard.
Tasos Kampouris: Continuous improvement is about excelling. It is very, very important to have a standard and from there, you can excel. So, imagine, having 13 factories around three continents, we have so many brilliant minds around, and it is very important for us, how we can gather all this knowledge, bring it together, make a standard.
Dafni Vakasi: What really helped us in designing the solution or our facilities was how flexible PLEX can be. We sat together with the experts, and we designed the solution to fit the needs of the Bizerte team, but also our factories in the rest of the world, like Athens, which we are now are starting implementation; Manaus, looking into Mexico. So, this is our journey afterwards.
Sami Souidi: One year after the PLEX implementation, I can say that PLEX is a good system that facilitates our day to day. For us, in Bizerte, in our moving from 100% paper to PLEX system, the result was there after one year, but we continue the challenge in order to have authority over the system, and this phase will be our target for the next months.
Tasos Kampouris: Combing PLEX MES and integrating into our daily routines is what’s going to drive us to further improve our OEE. So, it’s a journey, but it starts now. It’s a combination of solutions, people and systems that we implement in our production.
Rogelio Demay: The first thing, of course, was bringing tangible benefits to the business, of course. We can bring together simple, reliable, standard and cost-effective IT solutions. So, of course, Rockwell Automation has been a great partner for this, and I think it’s because PLEX MES for me, it’s much more than a tool – you know, it’s a common and shared vision where, to say the long story short, we believe that it’s about connecting all these different dots which is important to succeed. This is where Rockwell Automation has been a huge support because they are on the same vision, about all these operational technologies that we’ve used in BIC for a long time, and the IT world, that used to be disconnected, and now we’re working together to break this frontier between the two worlds.
