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Baldwin Richardson Foods supplies sauces, syrups, toppings, and fillings to top quick-service restaurants, consumer packaged goods brands, and food service companies. With a commitment to innovation and operational excellence, the company operates a growing network of manufacturing facilities designed to scale efficiently while maintaining the highest standards of quality and performance.

Challenge

As a leading custom ingredient manufacturer, Baldwin Richardson Foods is committed to efficiency and innovation. To support its growing operations, the company needed a scalable MES solution that would streamline data collection, improve operator engagement, and provide real-time insights across multiple facilities. However, previous MES platforms lacked the flexibility Baldwin Richardson Foods required. Operators had to navigate multiple systems, complicating downtime tracking and root cause analysis. This increased busy work and limited their ability to drive meaningful process improvements.

Solution

To address these challenges, Baldwin Richardson Foods implemented Ignition® by Inductive Automation and Sepasoft’s OEE Downtime Module at their Williamson facility before expanding to multiple sites. The open, scalable architecture allowed them to centralize data, connect with external systems, and eliminate the inefficiencies of switching between disconnected platforms. By unifying operations within a single platform, operators are empowered to track downtime, analyze performance, and make data-driven decisions in real time.

A key factor in Baldwin Richardson’s success was mapping downtime events back to faults from the start, ensuring accurate coding and a smoother implementation. This groundwork enabled them to replicate the same configuration across additional facilities, accelerating deployment and maintaining a consistent interface throughout the enterprise. With a standardized MES system in place, training became seamless, operator engagement improved, and leadership gained real-time visibility into production performance across all sites.

“Some of the challenges that we faced were a lack of employee engagement due to needing to bounce around between software. It led to operators misunderstanding how to truly diagnose the problem. It left them doing more busy work on the tablet and not truly driving for root cause.”
―Grayson Blanchard, Production Manager

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Key Benefits

• Greater Operator Engagement: Standardizing on a single MES reduced busy work and improved how operators diagnose issues, driving a culture shift toward proactive problem-solving.
• Enterprise-Wide Scalability: A centralized system enabled Baldwin Richardson Foods to expand MES from one facility to multiple sites efficiently, maintaining a consistent interface across locations.
• Improved Data Visibility: Integration with PLCs provided accurate, real-time production data, allowing leadership to monitor performance across all sites from a single enterprise server.
• Enhanced OEE Insights: With asset-level efficiency tracking, the company can pinpoint underperforming equipment and make informed capital investment decisions.
• Future-Ready Digital Transformation: With a scalable MES foundation in place, Baldwin Richardson Foods is positioned to integrate advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI to further optimize production in the future.

By standardizing on Sepasoft MES, Baldwin Richardson Foods streamlined operations, improved engagement on the production floor, and laid the foundation for future digital transformation initiatives across its enterprise.

“I think the most significant improvements that have been made since moving to the software have been in the lives of the operators. The engagement we are seeing from them has been a complete culture change and has really been driven by the fact that we’re reducing the busy work and allowing them to understand their machines.”
―Grayson Blanchard, Production Manager

Baldwin Richardson OEE Case Study Transcript

RJ Tuschong (0:04):

My name is RJ Tuschong, I am the Plant Manager for Baldwin Richardson Foods, Williamson facility. We were founded in 1997. Our headquarters are in Macedon, New York. Baldwin Richardson Foods is a custom ingredient manufacturer. We supply sauces, syrups, toppings, and fillings to the top quick service restaurants, customer packaged goods, brands, and food service companies. We’ve got four plants currently, two of which are fully on Sepasoft software. We started early 2024 and have been continuing the journey since then, implementing throughout the other facilities.

Alan Watts (0:42):

My name is Alan Watts, I am the Smart Manufacturing Manager here at Baldwin Richardson Foods. I’ve been with the company for just over two years now. So prior to my joining the company, we had tried several different MES platforms, none of which were really a good fit for Baldwin. They really weren’t scalable in the way that we needed them to be and they didn’t have the capability for us to build out the customizations that we needed to support us as a manufacturer.

Greyson Blanchard (1:16):

Hi, I’m Greyson Blanchard, Production Manager here at the Williamson Facility for Baldwin Richardson Foods. I’ve been with the company for 11 years. Some of the challenges that we faced were a lack of employee engagement due to needing to bounce around between softwares. It led to operators misunderstanding how to truly diagnose the problem. It left them doing more busy work on the tablet and not truly driving for root cause. Moving to Sepasoft has helped the operators stay on one software, quickly downtime coding, and using that information to drive the decisions on the floor.

Alan Watts (1:54):

Sepasoft and Ignition were chosen over other providers, primarily because they offer an open platform that is really easy for us to expand. You can scale it from one line or one facility to an entire enterprise spread across the country. You know, the other big influencers were their ability to connect to outside data sources, as well as our ability to tie into machine learning and AI as a future direction for the platform. We initially rolled the platform out to our Williamson facility. There was already architecture in place for collecting machine states as well as counts, which really helps speed the deployment in this facility and prove out the value of the platform.

RJ Tuschong (2:51):

One piece of advice I would provide for implementing OEE would be to map out and understand your downtime events back to your faults. Truly understanding your downtime coding upfront will allow for a quicker implementation.

Alan Watts (3:05):

We’ve been able to roll that into three facilities using all of the same work that was done for the Williamson site. This has really allowed us to scale it out quickly and have a consistent face to the platform across multiple sites. We’ve also recently rolled out an enterprise server, which aggregates data from all of our sites and allows our executive leadership to monitor the facilities from one central location and do all reporting from that location.

Greyson Blanchard (3:38):

Here at Baldwin Richardson Foods, the operators are truly the owners of their assets. Training was very easy from the standpoint. They were juggling several different softwares to get the information they needed. They were very eager to learn how this new software worked and it was pretty seamless. I think the most significant improvements that have been made since moving to the software have been in the lives of the operators; the engagement we are seeing from them has been a complete culture change and has really driven by the fact that we’re reducing the busy work and allowing them to understand their machines and drive for root cause.

Alan Watts (4:19):

Another key benefit that we’ve seen since adopting the platform has been in calculating our OEE and efficiency at an asset level, whereas prior, we had only captured it on the line. We’re now able to see where certain assets aren’t performing as they should and better able to make capital decisions for where to bring in improved assets.

RJ Tuschong (4:45):

Some of the most significant improvements we’ve seen since implementing the OEE module is that we are tied directly back to the PLCs, so we are getting good information upfront. We are also seeing that our operators are highly engaged due to the interface of the system. It has integrated everything in so that we no longer have multiple formats they have to reference and go through.

Alan Watts (5:08):

By leveraging Ignition and Sepasoft and having one shared MES and SCADA platform, we’re able to better leverage work that our engineers are doing on the SCADA front into the MES side. That’s both led to improved visibility of data as well as reduced work for creating visuals for our operators to understand how our operations are running.

Excited to learn more? Reach out to us to schedule a live demo today!