HelloFresh SE is the global leader in meal kit delivery services. Their mission is to find new solutions for people to eat simply and consciously. With a strong focus on sustainability and efficiency, HelloFresh continuously strives to reduce food waste while simultaneously supporting local supply chains to offer fresh and high-quality products.
Efficient structures and processes at production sites are absolutely critical for HelloFresh. After all, it is here that the products are created, which ultimately leave consumers happy and satisfied.
Challenge
The production sites at HelloFresh are a highly dynamic environment with numerous combinations possible in the planning process. Before the start of the project with paretos, much of the production planning and control was conducted manually. The central challenge, therefore, was to automate and optimize production planning using current operational data.
Achieving higher efficiency and fewer production errors are the main goals, combined with reducing labor efforts and better utilization of the team. This can reduce unit costs and bottlenecks on production lines – and also prevent compensation costs for delayed deliveries.
Paretos works closely with the internal production planning and operational excellence teams at HelloFresh to continuously achieve these goals. Initially, the team configured a production planning optimization in an iterative process and made it available via API – with the goal of enabling daily optimization of weekly production planning.
Solution
It quickly became apparent that weekly optimization of production planning was not sufficient. Due to continuously unpredictable changes in parameters such as employee availability or demand for various products, planning needed to occur in much shorter cycles. The teams from HelloFresh and paretos continuously refined the optimization approach – based on insights and feedback from the shop floor.
Within six weeks, the team had integrated all relevant conditions into the planning and launched a test week. Thanks to the optimized plans, it was quickly possible to demonstrate the enormous impact of automation in a live environment.
Results
Through this approach, the teams from HelloFresh and paretos were able to achieve all project goals: "The AI-powered automation by paretos has been an absolute game-changer for our operational processes," says Virginia Baillie Strong (COO DACH at HelloFresh). "Thanks to optimized production planning, we have managed to reduce the number of worked labor hours, level load machine throughput, and thus increasing overall capacity at our production facility."
Complete automation of production planning eliminates the need for lengthy manual planning. Therefore, production processes are much more efficient and stable, resulting in worked labor hours being reduced by 18% during the test. Stock-outs are also 50% lower. The working environment for the planners has become much more efficient: Thanks to automation, there is now complete transparency over planning results, such as process lead times – and there is much more flexibility in responding to unforeseen changes in planning assumptions.
Moreover, the production potential at the site has increased by more than 10% during the test phase due to stable processes and better utilization. Customers are more satisfied and loyal because the number of delivery failures has decreased. And food quality has improved further because production lead times have been reduced.
