Tyson Food’s Jimmy Dean sausage plant processes over 150 million pounds of sausage annually. By automating its processes with Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Historian, powered by the AVEVA PI System, Tyson’s team could see weight by line, uptime percentage, and the number of saleable chubs (cylindrical sausage packages) produced. With this data, it has been able to make decisions to reduce waste and giveaway by 50% and increase yield by .01%—effectively paying for the project itself.
“In the Jimmy Dean sausage facility, the overall yield improvement after six months was 0.1%, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it adds up quickly to over 100 million pounds of sausage. That yield actually paid for the project itself.”
Johnathan Reichert, Senior Engineer for Innovation, Tyson Foods
Goals
- Gain real-time insights to optimize plant operations
- Reduce waste
- Comply with regulations
Challenges
- Lack of visibility into plant operations caused unnecessary waste
- Undetected production line flaws resulted in costly delays
Solution
Results
- Overall yield improvement of 0.1%, achieving ROI in the first six months
- Reduced waste and giveaway by 50%
- Saved 8 worker hours per day
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