Results at a glance
The situation
The client operates a large-scale pharmaceutical production facility with annual revenues exceeding £200m, running multiple packaging lines supplying regulated markets. Schedule adherence, throughput, and service levels are critical to meeting customer commitments.
The facility was experiencing poor adherence to the production plan, directly impacting customer service levels. Performance was clearly below expectation — but there was no real-time visibility into why. Understanding what was going wrong required significant manual effort, and by the time data was available, it was already too late to act on it.
Operational teams were constantly reacting to issues rather than proactively improving performance. The data existed — but it arrived too late and cost too much effort to collect.
What made this hard
Manual data collection
Production data was recorded in spreadsheets. Equipment stoppages were logged retrospectively and inconsistently.
Monthly reporting cycles
Performance was collated per line and reported monthly — long after issues had occurred and any opportunity to intervene had passed.
No capacity for improvement
Teams spent their time investigating problems rather than fixing root causes. No bandwidth remained for continuous improvement.
Hidden root causes
Minor and major stoppages were difficult to identify, categorise, or analyse without structured, real-time event data.
Heterogeneous equipment
Multiple packaging lines from different manufacturers, making a single integrated approach technically complex.
Capital constraints
The solution needed to deliver value without requiring major capital investment or disruptive integration work.
How Omletec delivered
Translated operations into digital requirements
Omletec started by understanding how production teams actually worked — their daily routines, tier meeting structures, and the decisions they needed to make. The focus was not on deploying technology for its own sake, but on identifying the specific information gaps that were preventing the site from improving performance.
Designed a non-intrusive architecture
Rather than integrating directly with PLCs — which would have required significant engineering effort, risk, and capital — Omletec designed a solution that captured production events as products exited each packaging line. This provided accurate, reliable throughput data with minimal complexity and zero disruption to existing equipment.
Solution architecture
Delivered real-time, role-appropriate visibility
The web-based portal provided clear, role-appropriate views for operators, supervisors, and management. Users configured targets per shift and per piece of equipment, enabling instant visibility of performance against plan. The interface was designed to support daily operational decision-making — not just retrospective reporting.
Built in continuous improvement from the start
A continual improvement module was integrated into the solution, allowing users to log and analyse specific events on specific lines. This removed the need for manual data collation and provided clear insight into the root causes of performance losses — giving teams the data they needed to fix problems, not just report them.
Kept it simple and scalable
The entire solution was designed as a low-capex, plug-and-play architecture that could be deployed across heterogeneous production lines without major disruption. No PLC integration, no heavy engineering, no capital approval process — just fast, actionable insight with minimal operational overhead.
Before
Monthly reporting cycles
Manual spreadsheet data collection
Reactive — investigating after the fact
Root causes hidden in inconsistent logs
No time for continuous improvement
After
Real-time visibility at every level
Automated, sensor-driven data capture
Proactive — acting on live performance data
Structured event logging and root cause analysis
Teams focused on improvement, not firefighting
The outcome
Schedule adherence increased from 60% in 2022 to 74% year-to-date in 2026 — a direct result of giving operational teams the visibility they needed to act. Manual data collection for packaging line performance was eliminated entirely.
The site now has full real-time visibility of minor and major equipment stoppages, performance to plan, changeover performance, and line-level and site-level throughput. Real-time data drives tier meeting agendas, enabling faster decision-making and proactive issue resolution.
By removing the effort required to collect and analyse data, operational teams were able to shift their focus from firefighting to continuous improvement — which is where the real long-term value lies.
Why Omletec
Omletec delivered value not by deploying complex technology, but by understanding how manufacturing teams work and what information they actually need to improve performance. The result was a practical, scalable solution that delivered insight, control, and measurable business impact.
Operations-first thinking
Started with how teams work and what decisions they need to make — not with the technology.
Pragmatic architecture
Non-intrusive, low-capex design deployed across heterogeneous equipment without PLC integration.
End-to-end delivery
From edge devices and cloud infrastructure to dashboards and CI tooling — a single, cohesive solution.
Measurable impact
Schedule adherence improved by 14 percentage points. Manual data collection eliminated completely.
The best manufacturing technology is the kind that disappears into the operation — giving teams the insight they need without adding complexity to their day.