Cuisine Solutions Leverages Real-Time Data to Enhance Production Efficiency and Drive Growth

Built upon more than 40 years of experience, Cuisine Solutions is the world’s largest sous vide manufacturer and a leading culinary innovation partner. With locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia, the company provides prepared food products to customers worldwide including Amtrak, Costco, Dunkin’, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Panera, and Starbucks among many others. Like most small to mid-sized manufacturers, rising demand can create both opportunities and challenges. And Cuisine Solutions has had its share of both.

To capitalize on the growing popularity of sous vide cooking, Cuisine Solutions set its sights on:

1. Further solidifying their market leadership position.
2. Investing in product innovation.
3. Growing the business both domestically and internationally.
4. Expanding its global manufacturing footprint.

Achieving these goals would require enhancing managerial and worker effectiveness, new levels of throughput and production efficiency, and a move away from antiquated tools and manually intensive processes. In short, business as usual was no longer an option.

In 2022, Cuisine Solutions invested to fuel its plans for growth and operational improvements. This would allow the company to rescale its worldwide manufacturing infrastructure, invest in its workforce assets, and embrace digital tools and automated processes to:

1. Train frontline managers and develop them into strong leaders.
2. Minimize employee turnover.
3. Improve planning, forecasting, and resource management.
4. Effectively manage the implementation of new processes and procedures.

Professional development was a priority for Cuisine Solutions. Rewarding loyal employees with the training and resources to advance their performance and careers would pay dividends for employees and the company alike.

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Cuisine Solutions turned to respected business consultancy, Proaction International, to boost operations and the effectiveness of its managers. Using their Daily Management System (DMS), UTrakk, expert coaches from Proaction International worked with frontline supervisors to improve communication and managerial effectiveness, providing them with the critical skills needed to better align and lead their teams. Proaction International helped to establish key rituals for driving employee performance, such as active supervision tours. These tours provided the opportunity to detect any variances and make corrections in real time, to ensure optimal performance. In addition to implementing, standardizing, and ritualizing active supervision tours, coaching helped Cuisine Solutions adopt best practices for fostering employee involvement by providing constructive feedback and voicing appreciation for their teams. In this way, workers feel that they are listened to and valued, which boosts engagement and contributes to success.

While this approach did have a positive impact on behavioral issues, key production metrics such as throughput, downtime, and machine availability required more focused attention. Like most manufacturers, Cuisine Solutions made it a point to track KPIs. However, the data was anything but timely as day-end metrics were captured on a spreadsheet and physically transposed into a registry for generating graphs and charts. This labor-intensive process was prone to human error and did not provide the on-demand information needed to make quick and confident decisions. A more sophisticated data collection and analysis process was needed to provide real-time insight into production performance and the information to make critical business decisions with confidence.

Proaction International collaborated with Worximity to connect its hardware to Cuisine Solutions’ main food processing line. Data collected from Worximity’s real-time production and OEE monitoring software was integrated directly into UTrakk and displayed on Cuisine Solutions’ shop floor. This simplified the process while eliminating the time and cost associated with utilizing and maintaining two separate systems. Worximity’s software provided the production metrics that Proaction International would utilize as a part of a comprehensive improvement initiative.

The integrated software solution captures, analyzes, and manages metrics such as:

1. Downtime and availability
2. Production performance and throughput
3. Quality and rejects

With accurate and comprehensive data easily accessible from UTrakk, management at Cuisine Solutions is armed with the right information to address during their daily communication rituals. For example, teams can discuss and address the length and reasons for equipment downtime or missed production targets. With this data, action items are communicated at the start and end of a shift where crucial information is exchanged with the incoming staff.

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The integrated UTrakk-Worximity solution allows Cuisine Solutions to address its goals and challenges.

COMMUNICATION

Thanks to the combined partnership of Worximity and UTrakk, morning and afternoon shift leaders are in regular communication sharing information regarding:

1. The product produced
2. The quantity produced
3. The quantity missing to finish the day
4. Problems encountered during the shift

This information is documented and tracked in UTrakk and passed on from one shift leader to another, allowing operations teams to seamlessly continue with minimal disruptions. The first shift assistant production manager, for all conditioning lines, will hold a 5-minute meeting to remind the staff of best practices, things they need to be aware of, and how much was produced the night before, based on insights coming from Worximity software. This helps to set expectations and provide clear objectives for the day.

PRODUCTION

Before implementing Worximity, the ability to react to changing conditions lagged as production logs were manually entered into Excel before being analyzed at the shift’s end. Now production data is automatically acquired, displayed, and integrated into UTrakk in real time allowing management to react instantly. Cuisine Solutions is now fully aware of production performance, machine availability, productivity, and total volume to date. “Worximity provides visibility on downtime and motivates shift leaders to ensure their lines are running efficiently. Every three months, Worximity provides us with a report that helps us to understand trends and identify problem areas and opportunities for improvement. Armed with this information, we can confidently take steps toward continuous improvements,” stated Adrien Bellion, Manufacturing Engineering Manager.

With daily rituals, employee development, and metrics-based decisions, business as usual has a new look for Cuisine Solutions. Communication has improved and the company has a clear path toward maximizing production, thanks to UTrakk and Worximity’s combined efforts. Improvement is an ongoing process for any company and Cuisine Solutions expects that in the coming year enhancements will include increased adoption of the software by the production team and the ability to leverage the data more fully to reduce downtime. Ultimately, the goal is to continue to advance production performance, drive efficiencies, and foster best management behaviors to take full advantage of opportunities for unprecedented growth.

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