Pretium Packaging drives efficiency and reduces energy consumption with Guidewheel

Pretium Packaging is a leading full-service designer and manufacturer of rigid packaging solutions with more than two dozen factories across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. They offer a variety of sustainable packaging solutions with consistency, quality, and cost-effectiveness in mind.

Julio Oropeza is the VP of Operations for Pretium. He’s responsible for all Pretium operations in Mexico. Before Guidewheel, data was captured manually by employees recording uptime and other key metrics using pen and paper. This process was not only time-consuming, but it also didn’t capture enough data to produce meaningful insights. Julio and his team knew that there were opportunities to optimize operations through increased efficiency and productivity but needed data to find them.

As part of Pretium’s initiative to deploy Guidewheel to all of their plants globally, Guidewheel was rolled out last year to both Pretium plants in Mexico. The initial focus was on monitoring downtime across 80 machines in their primary work centers, but in a second phase they extended Guidewheel to auxiliary machines as well. With Guidewheel, they were able to quickly identify opportunities for improvement.

“Guidewheel has helped us across the board from improving utilization, to real time floor monitoring, to driving efficiencies higher,” Julio explained.

One big improvement came in the form of real time decision making. In their Lerma plant, with over 600,000 square feet, it had been impossible for supervisors to see everything that was happening across the plant. But with Guidewheel Scoreboards displayed on the plant floor, they have a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening in real time across the plant. This equips them to make data-driven decisions in real time. For example, if they’re falling behind production targets, they can decide to perform maintenance or add an extra shift to catch up. This has had a direct impact on the bottom line as well as their customers.

“As efficiencies went up, we’ve been able to produce and sell more, ensuring those machines are running every hour and putting out every dollar they can,” said Julio. “Our performance to plan has increased greatly. We’ve also improved on-time delivery for customers.”

Another improvement came in the form of energy savings. With the cost of energy in Mexico 2-3 times higher than in the US, it is a significant contributor to P&L. And with sustainability core to Pretium’s mission, reducing energy consumption is a priority across the company. Prior to Guidewheel, the only way to track energy consumption at the plants was with their energy bill which showed them how much energy was consumed by the plant, but not by each machine. And because their consumption was high, they were paying monthly penalties to the power company.

But with Guidewheel’s detailed energy data, they found idle time they could eliminate by powering off machines when not in use, ways to optimize startup and shutdown, and minimized runtime on high-consumption work centers. They were also able to reduce redundancy on their auxiliary equipment. Within 3 months, they went from paying a 5% penalty on their monthly energy bill to receiving a credit from the power company.

Finally, Guidewheel has helped Julio and his team to understand hidden energy drains. They had been running one large machine with less than full cavities because full cavitation would have required an expensive repair. But when they saw the energy consumption of this machine, they realized the investment would deliver payback within 6 months. Before Guidewheel, they never would have known that making the repair and running the machine at full cavitation would be worth the investment.

“We’ve already come a long way from where we started and there’s still room to improve. The savings are really adding up,” Julio explained.

Pretium Mexico's adoption of Guidewheel drove not only operational improvements and increased efficiency but also played a crucial role in reducing energy consumption and costs. The platform's real-time monitoring capabilities empowered Pretium to make informed decisions, optimize production, and achieve a substantial return on investment. Guidewheel continues to be an integral part of Pretium's commitment to sustainability, efficiency, and future growth in the region.