Reducing Waste by at least $2-million a Year

PepsiAmericas, the second-largest Pepsi-Cola anchor bottler, is using a custom-designed lab testing and quality control application in 21 plants in the U.S. and the Caribbean, featuring Zontec's Synergy 2000™ SPC software.

The system captures plant-level data such as CO2, Brix, TA/pH, net content and TDS/TBD from standard off-the-shelf data collection hardware and transfers it to PepsiAmericas headquarters.

"The system ensures that all facilities are playing on the same field, working from one set of master tables," says Al Warner, Director of Quality. "It allows to prove to our parent company that we performed a test, what time we performed it and what were the results. We incorporated closed-loop logic so that Lab Technicians can't proceed until the test is completed," he explains. "Now we have a networked system that presents the data in a format that the beverage industry is familiar with, and that can output reports any way we wish. In the first year, we reduced our out-of-standards by 50%, improved our compliance level from 96.3 to 98.5, and reduced waste by more than $2-million a year."