Unilever expands Total Productive Maintenance program with help of Informance

Informance International, a leader in manufacturing business and enterprise manufacturing intelligence solutions, announced March 8 that Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer packaged goods companies, has chosen to expand the deployment of the Informance software solution across all of its plants in the Americas. The deployment is part of Unilever's Total Productive Maintenance program (TPM) aimed at enhancing manufacturing performance in efficiency and quality across the region.

The move toward a standardized approach to drive and sustain manufacturing operations performance is the next chapter in the long-time relationship between Unilever and Informance. Unilever's expansion into additional plants, including those in the ice cream business, brings to 21 the number of plants utilizing this technology and includes Informance's software-as-a-service (SaaS) hosted solution. The system and software allows manufacturers to leverage real-time performance intelligence in order to assess improvement opportunities, align plant tactics with corporate strategies, and exercise the most efficient use of the information to sustain the effects of operational excellence activities.

According to Terry Herber, manager of supply chain capabilities Americas of Unilever, "Informance allows us to apply TPM loss elimination principles across our plants. For many years, we have used Informance in plants to tackle OEE (overall equipment effectiveness). We now have visibility of this information regardless of where you sit and can help replicate the improvement gains across multiple factories."

Consumer goods manufacturers are constantly looking at improving efficiencies across their supply chains. Global manufacturers report that simple OEE tools are not adequate to drive the improvement agenda, and leading manufacturers look to solutions that deliver facts, pervasive visibility, and maximum knowledge transfer, along with real-time data to drive their efficiency and optimization plans.

"We are proud to partner with Unilever to help them achieve their performance goals," said Sunil Singh, CEO of Informance. "It's not just about helping them advance their operational excellence initiative, but further enabling them to quantify and report the financial impact of improvements, and to contribute to financial performance through those actions that will have the greatest impact with the least investment."

Informance is already a leading provider of Manufacturing Intelligence solutions, leading the market in offering Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) Software as A Services (SaaS) subscription solutions. "This on-site hosted model has enormous benefits for Unilever for deploying on a regional scale," said John Oskin, executive vice president of Informance. "Informance Advisory Services, coupled with a quick deployment model, will enable us to accelerate the impact on their operations."

About Unilever
Unilever's mission is to add vitality to life. They meet everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life. Unilever is one of the world's leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with strong local roots in more than 100 countries across the globe. Its portfolio includes some of the world's best known and most loved brands including thirteen EUR 1 billion brands and global leadership in many categories in which the company operates. The portfolio features brand icons such as Knorr, Wall's, Flora, Dove, Axe/Lynx, Omo/Persil/Skip, Marmite and Pot Noodle. Unilever has around 174,000 employees in approaching 100 countries and generated annual sales of EUR 40 billion in 2009.

About Informance International
Informance delivers Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) solutions to help clients accelerate operational performance initiatives, drive operating strategies and capture actionable insight; measured by speed-to-value. Using Informance, manufacturing teams can drive corporate initiatives like lean, Six Sigma, TPM and other continuous improvement methods. Clients quickly unlock hidden capacity, increase productivity without additional capital investment, reduce inventory and labor costs, and increase working capital.