Company

Pastificio Lucio Garofalo is an Italian excellence in pasta production. A leader in high-quality pasta, it exports its products to over eighty countries worldwide. The heart of production is in the Gragnano (NA) plant, which accounts for 8% of the pasta industry value in Italy. With 200 employees, 500 tons of pasta produced daily, and a turnover around 200M€, the company has been part of the Spanish group Ebro Foods since 2014, which acquired 52% of the shares.

The Challenge

The production of consumer goods, mainly distributed through large-scale retail (GDO), presents several challenges for planners. With the introduction of an integrated finite capacity planning and scheduling system, the company needed to address the following issues:

• Calculating finished product requirements while considering semi-finished goods, promotional events, and sales forecasts.
• Optimizing production sequences on the lines to minimize set-ups and line cleaning activities.
• Simulating tool (dies) and material availability constraints.
• Simulating the expected delivery dates of customer orders based on the finite capacity schedule.
• Calculating the material and packaging component requirements, synchronizing these needs with the finite capacity schedule.

Solution

The implementation of Compass at Pastificio Lucio Garofalo SpA was part of their strategy to digitize processes. The software integrated into production is used to:

• Plan finished products, considering the lot policies defined for semi-finished goods. This enables packaging proposals that are already sized according to the minimum lots of bulk pasta.
• Plan finished products respecting inventory policies, taking into account forecast trends and promotional phenomena typical in the GDO.
• Generate a schedule that respects tool and material availability constraints, considering complex setup matrices, with a focus on reducing setup and cleaning activities.
• Detect potential issues early that could affect customer order delivery dates and allow for corrective actions.
• Calculate the purchasing needs for packaging materials and semolina, providing feedback on the availability of semolina storage silos during the purchase planning phase.

Results

• Reduced planning time.
• Improved visibility of the medium to long-term plan with early identification of potential issues.
• Better inventory management.
• Improved procurement management with a supply chain collaboration approach with suppliers.
• Enhanced use of production capacity.
• Reduced time spent on setup and equipment adjustments.

“Garofalo operates 24/7 with continuous production. With Compass, we manage to have updated data three times a day, at the end of each shift. This allows us to keep stocks, production transfers, customer orders, and purchase orders constantly updated. The planner can make real-time decisions based on the actual situation. Furthermore, we have more accurate monitoring of critical issues and material demand overloads in each work center, enabling us to intervene before issues arise. We’ve reduced packaging material stock by 30% and optimized finished product inventory to align with what the market demands.”

Nicolò Salviati, Manager of packaging process (Pastificio Lucio Garofalo SpA)