The recipe for a perfect pizza goes digital
The tradition of Megic Pizza meets Eaton technology
“Digitalizing our systems has been a great help because it gives us control over all stages of production at all times, thereby reducing waste and working hours and improving traceability. The improvements in information management and sharing have also enabled us to grow our business by 35% over the last five years.“
Background
At Megic Pizza, the art of pizza making is passed down from father to son, combining traditional craftsmanship with new technologies. Indeed, the company was founded over 50 years ago in Naples before moving to Grado in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Here, the Acampora family opened a pizzeria called "La Ciacolata" with the desire to share and make a name for real Neapolitan pizza, made using selected ingredients including quality flour and culture yeast. It was here in this historic restaurant that Michele Acampora and his son Gerardo decided to expand their activities in 1999, creating a new format that proved successful: bringing the flavors and aromas of traditional Neapolitan pizza into everyone's homes through fresh products available to buy in the supermarket. And so Megic Pizza—an acronym that combines the initials of the members of the Acampora family and the historical pizzeria—was born.
With its production of fresh pizza, the company began growing significantly straight away. Over the years, the company has developed a strong commercial presence both regionally and nationally, supplying fresh pizza to the main brands of Italian large-scale distributors. It has even reached foreign markets and Megic Pizza is now sold in more than 12 countries.
Furthermore, in 2016 the company was awarded the Italian Identity Index certificate, the internationally recognized "Made in Italy" quality seal.
Challenge
Fresh pizza production was initially managed by the family using a very traditional process intended to ensure that the craftsmanship of the product was not lost. Over the years, Megic Pizza has grown to serve the large-scale distributor sector: satisfying the increasing number of orders therefore inevitably required switching from an artisan production system to one at an industrial level. The constant underlying every business transformation, however, was the desire to maintain the authenticity of the tradition and the quality of the ingredients.
The company introduced new machines in the fresh pizza production cycle, which begins with measuring and mixing selected raw ingredients to create dough. Once subdivided into balls, the dough is proofed in special rooms for around 24 hours before being rolled out and topped by hand according to the specific recipe. The pizzas are then packaged in a controlled atmosphere and are ready to be stored in the refrigerator at a temperature between 0° and 4°C. Meeting very high-quality requirements and ensuring safety and traceability were therefore essential for Megic Pizza.
Solution
The recipe for the perfect pizza depends on the technology behind it as well as on selected ingredients; it requires a production process that employs the most sophisticated automation solutions available on the market.
Recognizing the importance of a cutting-edge approach that combines tradition and innovation, Megic Pizza turned to Dolphin Srl, leader in providing customized services and solutions for special machines and part of Eaton's network of certified Solution Partners. Dolphin analyzed Megic Pizza's needs in depth and, continuing a collaboration that began around ten years ago, identified Eaton as offering the solution that could afford the necessary automation, digitalization and flexibility.
"The digital transformation we proposed for Megic Pizza involves all areas of the company, from administration to production. Based on their needs, we have been able to translate traditional management dynamics into an automated industrial approach. Thanks to Eaton, we've overcome one of the most complex challenges posed by this project: Making the real automation part of the machines communicate with the information management system," said Valentino Peressi, Vice President of Dolphin Srl.
A system has therefore been implemented that sends details of the production batch to be processed to the Eaton HMI/PLC XV300 panel with I/O XN 300, whereby the machines automatically receive information relating to the quantity and type of ingredients to use.
The machines' flexibility in managing the different pizza qualities and possible variations constitutes significant added value from Eaton's solution. In a sector where customer needs are constantly changing, it's important for manufacturers to stay up to date and ensure that all operators are also immediately updated in order to optimize production and significantly reduce waste.
"As a company, we are constantly growing, and our needs are constantly evolving. The flexibility offered by Eaton's solution has given us a huge competitive advantage. Thanks to the ability to carry out continuous upgrades, we can meet our specific needs in a timely manner in order to optimally meet new market demands," said Gerardo Acampora, CEO of Megic Pizza.
Every part of the line is integrated into the production process. The HMI/PLC XV300 panels on the machines are able to communicate and interface with all the components in the system, allowing operators to obtain data on what they are doing and save useful information for quality control and ingredients management.
"When our end customers see the level of engineering and computerization in our manufacturing process, they're really surprised. In this highly flexible sector, which is often subjected to last-minute production changes, implementing high standards of control, organization and focus on the process is particularly important," Acampora explained.
What's more, thanks to predictive maintenance and remote diagnostics enabled by Eaton's solutions, complex situations can even be solved remotely via VPN. Being able to identify problems immediately and intervene swiftly has reduced production downtimes too.
Results
In the food context, known for its unpredictable production, Eaton's solutions - proposed and integrated by Dolphin, that managed the communication between the system used by implementing specific functions to increase safety, flexibility, customization and competitiveness - allowed Megic Pizza to undertake an innovative process of Digital Transformation translated into concrete benefits from the point of view of process and cost management, as well as company growth.
"Digitalizing our systems has been a great help because it gives us control over all stages of production at all times, thereby reducing waste and working hours and improving traceability. The improvement in the management and sharing of information also allowed us to growth our business by 35% in the last five years: the order entry process and any production change have been optimized by 100%“, commented Acampora.
Specifically, the level of automation implemented led to a recovery in productivity of 20% and an improvement in line performance by 15%, as well as a 30% reduction in waste on pizza shaping. In addition, production costs have been cut for a total of 80,000 euros per year.
Predictive maintenance provided by Eaton's HMI/PLC XV300 has given the project undisputed added value. Indeed, if problems occur, the central system software receives alerts that accurately indicate the fault: The maintenance technician can then work on the production line at the exact point, thus avoiding loss of time, unwanted machine downtimes and consequent repercussions from a financial point of view.
Last but not least, implementing Eaton's solution has enabled Megic Pizza to make the most of the incentives and concessions offered by the Italian government to support the industrial transformation 4.0 — including hyper-amortization, which has allowed the company to recover 20% of its investment.
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