Article submitted by Aída Santos Valle, Responsible for Digital Transformation – IT Department
Aguilar de Campoo is a town with a strong biscuit-making tradition, as it is located in an area favourable to climate and raw material sourcing. At one time, five biscuit factories operated simultaneously in this small town. Today, Gullón is a benchmark, a national leader, and a major player in the sector at the European level.
- Tell us about Gullón. What is your core business and role within the project?
Gullón is a biscuit company with over 125 years of experience located in northern Spain. It has two factories, more than 1,600 employees, exports to over 120 countries worldwide, and continues to expand its business.
Our company is committed to continuous innovation, both in terms of technology and infrastructure, as well as in manufacturing processes and the creation of healthy products, always keeping the well-being of its employees in mind. Within ECOFACT, Gullón is a demonstrator company that actively participates in the project.
- Why did your organisation get involved in the ECOFACT project? How does this activity fit with the normal business of your organisation?
Among Gullón’s main projects is the digitization of the plant in general and the move towards Industry 4.0. ECOFACT perfectly aligns with the established roadmap. This new approach to data collection, recording, and analysis in the industry allows for optimization of the production process at various levels, while also facilitating employee operations and enabling collaborative work across all departments within the company, thanks to the dynamism offered by these technologies. Gullón saw ECOFACT as an opportunity for growth in this regard.
- How will the outputs of the ECOFACT project help production system energy performance?
The results obtained from the project will enable new developments that are fully aligned with Gullón’s ultimate goal: optimizing the activities and services of the plant through the digitization and automation of all its components.
One of the main costs associated with the production process is energy expenditure, both electrical and from natural gas combustion. Therefore, reducing energy consumption represents progress in both the economic and social aspects of the company, promoting sustainability.
- What are the technical challenges your work in ECOFACT is trying to overcome?
Although we have a very new, fully equipped plant, which facilitates the activities required for the development of ECOFACT, it is important to note that this is a complex project involving the entire company and requiring significant infrastructure to achieve.
In the initial phase we focused on studying the needs and services we wanted to address, as well as designing the necessary elements and resources. In the second phase of the project, we aimed to implement this analysis.
- What positive impacts will the project have when complete?
Once the project is completed, we expect to advance towards a more automated plant, leveraging this technology in the involved production lines and extending it to the rest of the production lines within our company.
Through digital evolution, we hope to identify currently unrecognized deviations, locate their origins, and minimize them as much as possible. In other words, we aim to optimize our production process across various fields.
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