Gillette standardizes on VisualPlant software

The Gillette Company has chosen VisualPlant from Executive Manufacturing Technologies (EMT) as its global manufacturing intelligence solution. Gillette is now installing VisualPlant software at three of its blade and razor manufacturing facilities located in the U.S., U.K., and Mexico.

By Control Engineering Staff September 11, 2003

The Gillette Company has chosen VisualPlant from Executive Manufacturing Technologies (EMT) as its global manufacturing intelligence solution. Gillette is now installing VisualPlant software at three of its blade and razor manufacturing facilities located in the U.S., U.K., and Mexico. Gillette will use VisualPlant to measure overall equipment effectiveness, maximize productivity, analyze throughput and identify causes of machine downtime for its blades and razors lines. Gillette is also conducting feasibility studies for additional VisualPlant implementations in other plants around the world.

Gillette began looking for an off-the-shelf manufacturing intelligence solution after unsatisfactory experiences with custom applications and commercial products that used proprietary hardware. The selection process involved a team from Gillette’s central engineering group, corporate IT and representatives from the company’s manufacturing facilities around the world as well as Gillette’s partners in the Braun, Oral Care, and Duracell manufacturing units.

According to EMT, VisualPlant is manufacturing Intelligence software for discrete and hybrid manufacturing. It is used by plant management and staff to understand what is happening on the plant floor in real-time. VisualPlant is an analytical layer that resides on top of plant floor software, providing operational visibility and enabling a fact-based decision making process. VisualPlant integrates, visualizes, reports, and generates user-defined key performance indicators on real-time, historical, and calculated data collected from the entire plant and delivers it to plant managers through a Web browser.

—David Greenfield, Editorial Director, Control Engineering, dgreenfield@reedbusiness.com