New keg tracking solution for BGI's brewery in Ethiopia
RFID Technology | Montelektro, Rijeka, Croatia, a system integrator in the brewing industry, and 8Sigma, Zagreb, Croatia, a MES provider delivered the solution KegTNT (Keg Track&Trace) to a brewery in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
KegTNT is a software solution that tracks kegs throughout their life stages while inside the brewery and within the whole supply chain.
In addition to the mentioned brewery, during 2021, KegTNT will be implemented in two more breweries owned by the same company, BGI Ethiopia, whose long brewing tradition dates to the first half of the 20th century. The BGI Ethiopia's owner is the French Castel Group.
The Ethiopian customer required a new, modern solution that will enable them to better manage its keg fleet, reduce costs related to the ownership of kegs, improve quality control, ensure better maintenance supervision, and to prevent possible keg losses.
Montelektro and 8Sigma's scope of supply included the implementation of KegTNT solution that collects and saves all the data about kegs' lifecycle, tracking it by using the RFID technology.
Real-time tracking
Its main purpose is to provide real-time tracking and traceability of each keg in the fleet, and better maintenance and quality control.
The scope also included a tablet application for tracking operations inside the brewery and a smartphone application for the sales agents. From now on, maintenance, laboratory, and warehouse staff can use tablets equipped with an RFID reader to manage everyday tasks related to the keg fleet. Sales agents can also report, track, and resolve all complaints through the application on their smartphones. All information is available in real-time, so staff can react immediately and identify potential problems even before they happened.
Within this project, KegTNT was also integrated with a keg filling plant (capacity of up to 900 kegs/h) that is fully automated and robotized. This integration enables the brewery to automatically collect and analyze data about kegs' filling, like production rates, reject rates, downtimes, and other elements required for an efficient production.
These features of KegTNT should help BGI Ethiopia not only to improve resource utilization and the management of keg fleet, but also to preserve its good reputation and a desirable market position.
