Husky Technologies™ is a Luxembourg industry flagship. Since 1953, Husky Technologies™ has been pioneering technologies that enable the delivery of essential needs to the global community, such as food and beverage, as well as medical applications such as syringes and blood collection tubes. A global leader, Husky is powered by teams of exceptional people in more than 40 locations with customers who operate in over 140 countries. By focusing on sustainably sourced feedstocks, material reuse and the exclusive use of medical-grade polymers, Husky continues to provide enabling solutions for the circular economy to the packaging industry. At all times, Husky’s customers operate in a highly competitive market which often demands 24/7 operation of their Husky equipment. On occasion, there may be challenges to overcome when maintaining world-class operational efficiency. One such challenge is prevention and detection of incidents when occurring, which limit equipment from performing at its best level.
Currently, when a problem occurs, traditional approaches to service can result in delays in detecting the problem, a lack of transparency and elevated time and costs to solve the problem since people are not always skilled or lack knowledge to do so.
Moreover, changing market needs place demands on customers to reduce operating costs whilst managing sustainability requirements. Such sustainability requirements constrain customers to reduce virgin resin consumption and increase post-consumer resin. The need to control every aspect of the injection molding process becomes paramount. Other packaging drivers include multi-layer applications used to extend shelf life of the package contents or to enable new part designs.
With the aim of meeting the client’s needs, Husky launched Advantage+Elite™ We call you, a cloud-based solution using the power of remotely connected equipment, combined with data algorithms designed to effectively monitor leading system variables, that, if left undetected, would result in a loss of equipment performance and productivity, therefore, increased costs.
The objective of Advantage+Elite™ We call you is to maintain this operating status whilst ensuring uninterrupted production by:
- creating “digital signature” of the system and its performance, working within pre-defined control limits ;
- performing a real-time monitoring of customers’ assets efficiency;
- proactively engaging with the team to secure and maintain the lowest total cost of production.
Husky has established proprietary advanced analytics models providing insights enabling the company to predict system performance deterioration, failures, proactively identify system performance problems and alert in case of issues and provide insight for continuous improvements on a regular basis (Operation Efficiency Reporting).
To provide a high level of transparency of the equipment performance, the Husky Monitoring Centre applies the “We Call You” service to contact the customer and collaborate aiming at bringing those leading system variables back into specification and operating status, preferably before customers experience a loss of equipment performance. The real-time monitoring capability continuously tracks the assets performance.
Advantage+Elite™ We call you is a combined solution of fully end-to-end cloud operating system that connects any equipment of Husky’s customers in any country at any time. This system is supported by the contact centre which, as soon as an issue is detected, alerts in a timely manner, customers on site and potentially provides some resolutions to this incident at a time of the communication. This results in maintaining the equipment efficiency to the highest level by, firstly, being proactive understanding potential issues arising and, secondly, being highly responsive if an incident should occur, which would jeopardize the operational efficiency.
The solution is a combination of various capabilities:
- Husky’s leading equipment in the industry,
- Connected to an edge device solution which provides the secured connectivity to the customers and,
- An end-to-end cloud capability providing alerts in real-time 24/7.
The solution is doing advanced data analytics to identify potential root cause of potential issues arising and produces weekly reporting to provide operational efficiency, summaries associated with root cause analysis of issues, guidance for resolution and monetization of the customer savings.
When considering the operational effectiveness of Husky’s equipment, two aspects shall be considered: first one from the quantity of parts produced every month or year, and second one is the quantity of energy that is required to produce at this level of quality. If you can reduce waste and stoppage in production line, and a better way of processing the resin material, then less energy is consumed during the production cycle.
To date, the total waste saved through the Advantage+Elite™ We call you represents as much as 10 million dollars of waste saved linked to operation effectiveness and up to 30% efficiency gain in productivity with approximately 6.000 tons of CO2 linked to energy consumption reduction at a global scale.
Husky has more than 100 customers connected to the solution in 48 countries and 3 main Monitoring Centres (Toronto, Shanghai, and Dudelange in Luxembourg).
After two years of testing, piloting and validation of the capabilities with early adopters, Husky moved into the full worldwide launch at the end of 2021. It is expected to reach 500 Advantage+Elite™ customers by the end of 2022.
And it is worth mentioning that Advantage+Elite™ We call you has recently been rewarded with the “Cloud Tech Innovation project of the Year” Award from Cloud Community Europe Luxembourg during the Golden-i Gala.