Refining the digital transformation strategy IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
DIGITAL REPORT 2022
REFINING THE TRANSFORMATION DIGITAL STRATEGY
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BELL FOOD GROUP
bellfoodgroup.com
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BELL FOOD GROUP
Sven Friedli, CIO of Bell Food Group talks through the group’s digital transformation journey and how it is fine-tuning its strategy
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passionate manager with almost 20 years of experience in telecommunications, enterprise architecture, and organisational development, Sven Friedli, CIO of Bell Food Group studied Computer Science and Business Economics at the University of Applied Science in Bern. Following his studies, Friedli worked for a startup in software development and later in his career in several roles at Swisscom. “In my career at Swisscom, I learned a lot about managing and delivering IT projects and telco services as well as steering the IT strategy and enterprise architecture of the company. Today, I lead the IT of Bell Food Group, and I am responsible for ensuring stable IT operation for our production plants, networks, data centres and digital processes. This is quite a challenge with all our locations spread over Europe. My job is to push the digitalisation of the company and to show the business the value of new technologies and opportunities that we can bring to the business, how we can automate our processes and find new business opportunities,” says Friedli. The digital transformation journey so far… When we last spoke to Friedli, Bell Food Group was at the start of its digital transformation, since then the company 4
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BELL FOOD GROUP
Bell Food Group
has completed its initial intelligence (AI) and “This is a huge effort, strategy and is now finemachine learning (ML) which requires a lot tuning its results. components. We use “In the last year, I of cultural change, we these technologies to have learnt more about improve our product are not 100% there our main challenges quality and optimise our and priorities as a yet, in terms of where daily processes. business. So as part of “The third is to create I want to be, but our strategy, I had four value for our employees pillars that I focused to collaborate together I think step by step, on. The first is the without boundaries we’re getting there” standardisation of and ensure they are our infrastructure and properly informed. application to control The Microsoft 365 SVEN FRIEDLI CIO, and gradually simplify product range and BELL FOOD GROUP the complexity of our our communication environment. The platform, called second priority is increasing productivity Beekeeper, will have an important role and processes. So we have to optimise our in helping us on our journey. Finally, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system continuous improvement and optimisation landscapes, introducing manufacturing of our processes and infrastructure to execution systems (MES), adopting ensure that our downtimes and disruptions new cloud technologies with artificial are as low as possible." 6
bellfoodgroup.com
BELL FOOD GROUP
SVEN FRIEDLI TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: FOOD PRODUCTION LOCATION: BASEL, SWITZERLAND
EXECUTIVE BIO
Some of the main achievements made by Bell Food Group include implementing SAP S4 HANA into all processes including finance, controlling, production, logistics, and planning in June 2021 for Bell Switzerland. “We first tried this in Easter, but we faced some issues, mostly around communication with our endpoint devices, to not risk our production, we had to roll back the implementation. I am really proud of my team that they have not lost heart after this failure. We further optimised the migration, conducted more tests so that two months later we had a much smoother rollout,” comments Friedli. Another achievement for the group includes the rollout of a new ERP implementation with CSB at Eisberg Switzerland. With a great combined effort from key users, the infrastructure team, the management and the CSB project team, Bell Food Group successfully, after two years, introduced the ERP system in November. “We have in total 63 locations spread across 15 countries, and we’re on the last steps to harmonise our MPLS network over the entire group,” says Friedli. “We have also launched a pilot with Beekeeper. With this platform, our trainees can collaborate and communicate together. We are now ready to scale this platform out to other parts of the company, to also reach out to our first line workers with digital information. We will be able to provide personal planning, site information, achievements, and much more information via their mobile device or on digital screens at the plant. “With Microsoft and Accenture we are introducing a new workplace strategy based on Microsoft 365 technology, right now we are moving all our exchange mailboxes to the cloud. Finally, we are also in the last stages of introducing an
Passionate manager with almost 20 years of experience in it, telecom, enterprise architecture, manufacturing and organizational development. Before Sven entered Bell Food Group he spend the past 12 years in the telecom industry. He started his career in studying computer science and business economics at the university of applied science in Bern and worked for a startup in software development. Within Swisscom Sven first was responsible for several managing roles in the enterprise business group, mostly focusing on managing and delivering IT projects and telco services. In the last five years, he was responsible for the architecture, technology and innovation steering among Swisscom. Since October 2020 Sven is now managing the IT of Bell Food Group. He has to keep the balance in order to master the increasing complexity in IT, to ensure the daily 7/24 operation of the company and to make sensible use of the opportunities of digitization for Bell Food Group.
IGZ & Hilcona: Digital production with SAP MES Discover how IGZ has been supporting Hilcona AG to digitalize its production with SAP MES Being a leading international active food manufacturer and part of Bell Food Group, Hilcona AG, as part of its digitisation initiative, has been pursuing its goal to introduce a future-proof and uniformed manufacturing execution system (MES) for its production.
The challenges Faced with many individual and partly obsolete systems at their ‘end of life’, Hilcona had no comprehensive MES available for all areas. As a result, the company experienced a lack of inventory transparency and traceability, failure to exploit potential productivity improvements, and a lack of ability to exploit process optimisation.
As such the company looked to IGZ to replace its obsolete systems, implement a comprehensive MES for all areas, reduce paper-based order execution, and integrate an end-to-end dynamic machine integration for more efficient production control and the ability to determine OEE/ KPIs and key figures difficult to implement with existing systems (standardisation).
Implementing SAP MES Hilcona’s implementation of SAP MES started in 2018. At the beginning of this complex project IGZ initiated a pilot phase at its in Schaan site for central filling production, focusing on scale integration and the replacement of existing subsystems for the production of semi-finished products. Following the initial pilot stage, Hilcona rolled out the pilot to other departments at the Schaan site as well as its additional production site in Orbe. In the next step the SAP MES basis template for batch production was extended by flow manufacturing processes for Schaan and Orbe. Thereby Hilcona could replace the existing non-SAP control
station (IMT) to allow the organisation to determine KPIs and operational equipment efficiency (OEE) in line with “Weihenstephaner Standard”, including evaluation and monitoring as well as reporting by means of IGZ best practice OEE 4.0 (cross-departmental).
How did Hilcona benefit from this SAP MES integration? With this integration of SAP MES, Hilcona gained a highly dynamic machine and shop floor integration concept that is reliable and easy to scale. The integration allowed Hilcona to install reliable processes with online worker guidance, reduce manual data entry with automated processes, increase work ergonomics and efficiency with demanddriven production replenishment and mobile applications instead of stationary dialogues, higher level of traceability down to the individual container level, improved quality with in-process inspections, and paperless production.
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BELL FOOD GROUP
“ I am really proud of my team that they have not lost heart after this failure. We further optimised the migration, conducted more tests so that two months later we had a much smoother rollout” SVEN FRIEDLI
CIO, BELL FOOD GROUP
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MES with our partner IGZ. This will be a big step in the digitalisation journey of our production at Hilcona.” Refining the process When it comes to a digital transformation strategy, Friedli explains that defining and implementing a strategy like this is really hard work. You really have to understand the needs of the business. You also have to be willing to challenge them in their daily routines and processes to drive real value into their daily work with the new technologies. Just rebuilding existing processes with digital tools is not the way.” Navigating a digital transformation In order to successfully navigate a digital transformation strategy, Friedli outlines
DID YOU KNOW...
INDUSTRY 4.0 - SVEN FRIEDLI “In a production company like ours, industry 4.0 is key, which is why we built up a central team called smart technology to strongly push this initiative. The goal of the team is to learn from partners, to understand what kind of opportunities new technologies are bringing, and to define and align groupwide standards to build up a common collaboration ecosystem. It is also important, that the team ensures an open collaboration and communication across all companies and locations to share their needs, challenges, and achievements made to learn from each other.
“We’re on our way to optimise our demand forecasting and demand planning at our sites, with weather forecasting, customer behaviours, and information about seasonality. By doing this you can optimise your planning to ensure that you can fulfil the needs of your customers and also reduce your costs in the production process. When it comes to cloud technology, we are currently trying to get the most out of our use of Microsoft 365, as a cloud platform we are focusing on Azure. But the cloud transformation is also pushed by using several software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to bring value to our process chain.”
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PARTNERS...
BELL FOOD GROUP
“For me, it is very important that we have a collaboration on eye level with our partners. With this kind of relationship, you can overcome challenges and tough times together as a common team. I think you have to know each other and you have to define common goals and a common understanding of your culture and needs. “What I am looking for in our partners is transparency. They have to provide me with an outside/in view, support my needs, and they should show me how to use the newest technologies and how they can make our company get better. Another very important factor for me is that they take over responsibility and commitment in this journey, and they act as a true partner, even in difficult times.”
that first and foremost you have to define and communicate a clear strategy. You have to have the right balance between central governance and de-centralised empowerment: “You really have to understand the needs and challenges of your business units. And you have to be able to make fast decisions and short term adoptions, on the journey if needed. I always like to say it’s people, not systems 12
bellfoodgroup.com
BELL FOOD GROUP
“ For me, it is very important that we have a collaboration on eye level with our partners, with this kind of relationship, you can overcome challenges and tough times together as a common team” SVEN FRIEDLI
CIO, BELL FOOD GROUP
that make a difference. So you have the right people and a clear, understandable strategy, I think this is the key success factor of digital transformation.” Since joining Bell Food Group in 2020, Friedli has implemented quite some changes in IT. Highlighting the management team and all his employees, Friedli says: “I think we really grew together as one team supporting each other, and we are focusing on aligned priorities. We managed to overcome failures and learn from them in order to do it better next time.” “We have also started to focus more on business outcomes than on technology implementations. And I think, in summary, we learned to talk better the language of our business and we try to find clever ways to support their needs. This is a huge effort, which requires a lot of cultural change. We are not 100% there yet, in terms of where I want to be, but I think step by step, we’re getting there together,” he concludes.
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