Pack Labs, a Pacific Fin Capital portco, reduces downtime 40% in just six months.
Pacific Fin Capital invests in and operates companies building the future of food & beverage production, with a view that better returns come from investing with purpose. They focus on sustainable, long-term investments into durable businesses where true value compounds from the accretion of trust and integrity. Pacific Fin aims to forge partnerships every bit as enduring as the companies they work with.
One way they add value to companies is by helping to identify areas of friction that can inhibit performance. They start by looking at downtime because it is often the fastest way to drive bottom-line results. As Mannie Ajayi, Managing Partner at Pacific Fin Capital, succinctly explains:
“You don’t make money as a manufacturer unless your equipment is running."
At Pack Labs, a Pacific Fin portfolio company, Mannie and the leadership team saw an opportunity to drive higher returns by reducing downtime, but they lacked insight into its root causes. The inability to pinpoint whether downtime was due to maintenance, startup, shutdown, or unexpected equipment failures made it difficult if not impossible to drive improvement. While many solutions might have given them the visibility they needed, most were out of reach for this mid-size manufacturer because they were simply too expensive and would take too long to get up and running.
When Mannie introduced Guidewheel to Pack Labs, the team immediately understood the potential impact it could have. By allowing them to get up and running quickly, and aligning all members of the team around a single source of accurate data on machine activity, they could easily understand and address the causes of downtime. As Mannie explained:
“Guidewheel allowed us to get visibility into what was driving downtime and what was affecting efficiencies, almost overnight. With that we could start attacking the different downtime causes and really dial things in to improve our efficiencies.”
For Pack Labs, Guidewheel serves as a central hub for all efficiency-related metrics, including downtime, yield loss, Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), and throughput. And every member of the team uses Guidewheel data to improve results. Operators on the plant floor use Guidewheel to track their performance in real time and to easily code downtime events for accurate reporting. The management team uses Guidewheel to collaborate with plant floor employees to address issues quickly. And the entire team reviews trends in Guidewheel to track progress against efficiency goals and to motivate the team to continuously improve.
Since implementing Guidewheel, Pack Labs has seen significant improvement. By reducing downtime, they’ve increased production and profitability. Their team achieved a 20% reduction in ops-related downtime within weeks, and 40% within 6 months. In addition to improving bottom-line results, Guidewheel continuously helps the company make data-driven CapEx decisions. For example, they have used Guidewheel to accurately quantify the cost of downtime on critical equipment. Once they saw the impact, it became clear a new piece of critical equipment was the right decision.
Guidewheel has become integral not only to the team on the ground at Pack Labs, but also to the management team at Pacific Fin Capital. For Pack Labs, Guidewheel provides an accurate source of data about performance that helps them focus on the things that need improvement. For Pacific Fin Capital, Guidewheel is a way to track Pack Labs’ progress against key goals, to celebrate the team’s success, and to step in to help if needed. It helps keep the team aligned and continuously improving.
Reflecting on the idea of what it would be like to no longer have access to Guidewheel, Mannie says that operating without it would be akin to "flying blind." To other Private Equity firms looking for solutions to provide visibility into factory operations, Mannie offers three key ways they get advantage through Guidewheel:
Cost-effectiveness. Guidewheel is simply the most affordable way to get real-time visibility into factory operations. It’s also the fastest path to ROI.
Ease of implementation. Where competitive solutions bog you down in a months-long IT project, Guidewheel is easy to implement and can be up and running in less than a day.
Insights and visibility. Guidewheel provides valuable insights into floor operations, aiding in decision-making at the management and board levels.
With Pacific Fin’s guidance, the team at Pack Labs has found multiple ways to improve efficiency and bottom-line results. They are consistently hitting continuous improvement targets and each new win motivates them to pursue even bigger goals. The partnership between Pacific Fin and Pack Labs is a model they hope to replicate throughout their portfolio.