On April 25, chocolate manufacturer Ritter Sport opened its doors to 41 representatives of our MES customers and interested parties.
Throughout the day, the participants were able to gain an insight into the production of the colorful chocolate bars and, above all, benefit from the many years of experience of CIP Coordinator Torsten Schlegel and Project Manager Production Markus Schimpf, who work with the MES FASTEC 4 PRO at Ritter Sport on a daily basis.
After a welcome by the Managing Director of FASTEC GmbH, Dr. Karl-Heinz Gerdes, the participants were first given an insight into the Ritter Sport company. The participants were then taken on a two-hour guided tour through the heart of the chocolate manufacturer: production. Over three million bars of chocolate are produced here every day – that’s 30,000 meters of chocolate bars stacked on top of each other.
FASTEC 4 PRO in Production at Ritter Sport
The participants explored the Ritter Sport production facility, where monitoring screens are installed at central points in each area, starting with the mass area and continuing through to the coating system and packaging. Here, not only the OEE value but also the currently produced item, various target and actual values, a timeline with the states of the past hours and process values are permanently visualized. In this way, production can be viewed and transparency achieved at any time and from any location.
The monitoring screen views at Ritter Sport now differ significantly from the original screen views, which are integrated as standard in FASTEC 4 PRO, thanks to continuous further development tailored to production. They thus support the Ritter Production System, which incorporates a number of lean management methods. Torsten Schlegel and Markus Schimpf are constantly developing the monitoring views and using them effectively – not only to provide production managers with a live overview of production, but also for shift handovers or team meetings. These mainly take place in the Gemba islands, of which there are several at Ritter Sport.
After the production tour and lunch together in the canteen at Ritter Sport, the day’s program continued. After the tour, the participants received detailed information, experience reports and tips for their own MES projects.
The day was rounded off with a presentation by Dr. Karl-Heinz Gerdes on the topic of “With MES to digital production”, in which the participants were given an outlook on new technological developments for production that are currently available or can be expected in the course of Industry 4.0.
By the way: Did you know where the name Ritter Sport comes from?
The first part of the name goes back to the name of the founder, Alfred Eugen Ritter. Together with his wife, Clara Ritter, née Göttle, the chocolate and confectionery factory Alfred Ritter Cannstatt was founded in 1912.
The second part of the name is based on a little anecdote. 20 years after the confectionery factory was founded, Clara Ritter had an idea that would shape the company while watching some soccer fans. They bought long bars of chocolate on their way to the soccer field and then stowed them in their jacket pockets, where they quickly broke.
To avoid this, the idea was to create a chocolate that would fit into any sports jacket pocket without breaking and would weigh the same as the normal long bar. This is how the square chocolate bar, smaller in size but more stable, was born.
The name Ritter Sport was born and is still one of the family company’s trademarks today.