Digitalization is second nature for the new generation of operators

Annemarie Jorna is Chief Operating Officer at Royal Koopmans since one and a half year. Her career mostly evolved within in the food industry, partly at Douwe Egberts and for ten years at FrieslandCampina. The entire food industry has been digitalizing for years, and Royal Koopmans is no exception to that.

Royal Koopmans runs multiple mills for the processing of wheat. Besides they have diverse baking lines for the production of food coatings (breadcrumbs amongst others). The factory is in between analog and digital worlds, so the dependency on skill and craftsmanship are still quite real. A percentage of the mills is still mechanic and monitored with expertise. The “digital’ mill can be monitored fully from behind the laptop. This modern version is also present in our factory in Leeuwarden.

Digitalization has many advantages. The monitoring information from the installations is more clear and gives a better overview. It makes the machine information more easily accessible and the data it stores can be used to optimize the production process. As an operator you always want to get the most out of the process as well as be up to date with how well your team performed that day. Realtime OEE registration, for instance, gives insight into that.

For now not everything has been digitalized, but the transition has begun. A few years ago a new ERP system was implemented. Now, Royal Koopmans is busy with the renewed automatization vision in which they decide how to make the steps towards to industry 4.0 and in which order this has to happen.

In the past, the step to digitalization was a big one. But, due to digitalization being normalized at home at Royal Koopmans we notice that the operators can easily adapt to change. Especially the young operators see it as a standard part of their job.

This column is originally published by EVMI

Annemarie Jorna
Chief Operating Officer at Royal Koopmans