Australian OFS lands in US with landmark craft brewery deal

Australian manufacturing performance software company, OFS, has made its official debut in the United States through a breakthrough deal with Oregon-based craft brewery, Pelican Brewing Company.

With three breweries and brewpubs along the coast near Portland, Pelican has been a staple of the US craft brewing industry since it was established in 1996. It now produces nearly 50,000 barrels – equivalent to almost six million litres or 14 million schooners – every year, serving Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, and with an eye on further expansion. It makes beer on demand for its retail and consumer customers, a key element of the quality and freshness standards to which it holds itself.

The craft brewer was looking for a software solution that could provide better insights to help it identify and resolve issues, improve efficiency, and reduce waste.

“We had used other software before, but it never had the right levels of automation or any real-time data,” said Martin Bills, director of Brewing Operations, Pelican Brewing Company. “My ears are well trained – I can tell if there’s an issue on the line, and in time I can figure out the cause. But OFS gives my team and me that information in real-time so we can resolve it and get back to making beer.”

The OFS software uses sensors to draw real-time data from Pelican’s filling and packing lines. It combines this with insights from the folks who operate the line to identify and reduce inefficiencies and waste. The implementation of OFS hardware and software at Pelican was completed in less than one day.

Key areas where Pelican has seen tremendous value is in starting up the production. Understanding the inefficiencies and inconsistencies in methods and time consumed as operators perform sanitation and initial quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) checks is very important. Pelican can now identify the early morning delays, allowing the team to optimize these processes.

Another significant insight and subsequent opportunity discovered during the OFS trial at Pelican Brewing Company came from an unlikely source. OFS identified that the cardboard boxes used on the bottling line weren’t folding correctly due to quality issues, resulting in one of the biggest causes of unplanned downtime. Pelican was able to use this data to hold the supplier to account by demonstrating the amount of lost time that had stemmed from a poor quality product. 

OFS also highlighted hundreds of short, approximately one-minute stops at the filler and crowner, filling and caps beer bottles. As these were minor stops, they had largely gone unnoticed – but the data uncovered by OFS broadcasted the opportunity, the cost, and that the issue or micro-stops needed to be resolved.

Further, OFS identified that one of Pelican’s canning lines had lost almost a day’s worth of production due to running slower than its rated/costed speed. The team identified several key reasons behind this and performed experiments to improve speed, which during the trial phase alone, the speed increased by more than 10%.

Data providing the intel to grow

Pelican Brewing Company has its sights set on further expansion, buoyed by the renewed energy in the craft beer industry after the slowdown brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pelican has restarted its new brewpub in Lincoln City, Oregon, confirmed to be completed by mid-2022. Pelican remains committed to its ‘brew-on-demand’ model to maintain its quality standards and believes the data OFS unlocks will help it to expand efficiently.

“We’re enjoying much higher visibility across our brewing operations,” said Bills. “Over time, that data can inform our expansion and ensure we’re maximising our efficiency and reducing waste as we increase output. As a passionate brewer, we simply want to make more exceptional beer for our customers – OFS shows us the right questions to ask and the answers to do that.”

OFS chief executive officer James Magee believes the Australian software provider can become the de facto standard for the US craft brewing industry in Australia. “We conducted an industry report focusing on US and Australian brewers and found that craft brewer typically spend more than half their time not making beer,” said Magee. 

“That’s not the desired state for any craft brewer, and at the core of it, the issue is data – or a lack of how to measure performance and make the right changes based on it. This ultimately leads to bad days on the brewing packing line, and we’re on a campaign to relegate those days to the past. Pelican understands this link incredibly well and is making the right data decisions for better days and better beer.”

Pelican is OFS’ first US customer since it launched in the market. The software is the de facto standard in the Australian craft brewing industry with customers including stomping ground brewing, brick lane brewing, tribe breweries, moon dog, and stone and wood. OFS currently has proof-of-concept (POC) trials in several other breweries in the US.