Rhodes Food Group, a prominent player in SA`s canning industry for more than 90 years, has implemented one of PRAGMA Africa`s asset maintenance management planning tools, BURO service, at its two factories in the Western Cape and one site in Swaziland.
The company has an extensive product range of canned foods for local and export markets, including the UK, Europe, the US, the Far East, Canada and Australia.
The RFF factory in the Groot Drakenstein near Franschhoek, specialises in the canning of deciduous fruits, jams and vegetables as well as the production of fruit purees.
A second factory in the area, Wonderland Foods, provides chilled and frozen ready-made snacks, meats, pastas, sauces and desserts for the retail and catering industries, most of which are sold exclusively to Woolworths nationally.
A third factory provides dairy products under the Ayrshire brand for Woolworths in the Western Cape. The Swaziland factory produces canned grapefruit segments, pineapple, jams, juice concentrates and purees.
The BURO service, which provides a cost-effective outsourcing alternative to traditional in-house factory maintenance management solutions, is designed on the principle of continuous improvement in the utilisation of assets, ensuring process stability by implementing best operating practices through information systems and knowledge transfer.
Tailored to suit individual clients, BURO is targeted towards companies with a low asset management maturity level, and those without the resources to implement a full-scale maintenance management programme with the necessary hardware, software and manpower to see it through.
"Planned and scheduled maintenance plays a vital role in the canning industry," says Gerhard Kotz'e, director at the Rhodes Food Group.
"Specialised canning machinery, such as rotary cookers and coolers, syrupers, seamers and labellers are costly to replace so good maintenance is imperative. The fruit season is an intensive period of production and no factory can afford to be interrupted by breakdowns, when perishable raw materials are lined up for production."
One of the significant attractions of the BURO service, says Kotz'e, was the cost saving advantage it will deliver - indirectly by reducing machine downtime through planned maintenance procedures, and directly in the form of a rebate from the Department of Trade and Industry`s Competitiveness Fund.
The fund is in place to encourage initiatives that enhance competitiveness and can offer a significant rebate on project costs.
The Rhodes Food Group intends to run the BURO service for about 24 months.
The company then plans to upgrade its maintenance management system to PRAGMA`s ON KEY enterprise asset management system, which blends traditional computerised maintenance management with automated performance measurement to provide real-time monitoring and management of asset performance.
"We are very excited about getting Rhodes Food Group on board," says Steve Leech, MD of PRAGMA Africa`s BURO division. "I believe we will be able to add significant value to the company`s business."
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