"Savushkin product": digitalization from the field to the counter

The Savushkin Product Company, the leader of the dairy industry of the Republic of Belarus, was recognized as the winner of the Republican contest "Leaders of the Digital Economy - 2022" in the nomination "Company of the Year in the field of digitalization of processes and digital transformation of production activities" in the category "Agro-industrial complex".

The enterprise also became the absolute winner of the competition - the owner of the Grand Prix for comprehensive, large-scale work on the implementation of innovative solutions.

We turned to Valery Taberko, Chief Information Officer of OJSC Savushkin Product, with a request to talk about how digitalization helps to increase the efficiency of the dairy giant.

- Valery Vasilyevich, dairy products from the Savushkin Product company are well known in Belarus and RUSSIA. What, when and why prompted your company to seriously engage in digitalization?

- We approached the issue of automation at the enterprise in 1998. We started with the creation of the department "Automation of process control systems", which was engaged in the development of its SCADA system and the implementation of the first APCS projects for production.

Today, automation and digitalization in the company is the basis for ensuring the quality of finished products, the ability to track the entire production and logistics chain from the receipt of raw materials to deliveries to retail chains.

All processes are automated and digitized. The first stage is work with the resource zone - digitizing the fields of all sponsored farms using drones. For 2021-2022, territories belonging to Savushkina Pushcha OJSC with a total area of ​​10,143 hectares, SUE Savushkino (6,632 hectares), and dairy farms of the Savushkin Product Group of Companies were collected into a single system of maps.

Dairy farms (there are 506 of them) are geocoded, and routes are optimized taking into account delivery volumes, milking schedules, refrigeration equipment features and production plans for processing raw materials.

MILK is delivered to production only in a chilled form by modern milk carriers equipped with their own laboratories with automatic samplers and a GPS monitoring system. Milk is just "leaving" the farm, and we can already plan where exactly it will go next.

"Savushkin product" is 90% automatic plant. During the production process, milk does not come into contact with the external environment and humans at all, which allows us to preserve the maximum benefit and naturalness, guarantee the maximum safety of the finished product, and ensure its high quality.

A significant role in this is played by proper storage and transportation. When in 2014 we started the implementation of the project "Automated high-bay warehouse", there were no such solutions in any of the CIS countries.

Today, the Savushkin Product logistics center located in Brest, in terms of the degree of automation of all processes, has no analogues among the infrastructure facilities of the processing industry. Loading more than 450 items of products takes place in a fully automated mode, a special program allows you to control the expiration dates of goods, warehouse accounting. The process of full loading / unloading of a standard truck takes no more than 30 minutes. More than 500 vehicles are equipped with GPS devices with online monitoring. On the way "warehouse - retail facility" the optimum temperature for natural dairy products from +2 to + 6 C is guaranteed to be observed.

- At one time you created your own SCADA system, and did not use ready-made solutions. What did it give the company?

- The development of our own competencies in the field of automation of the dairy industry gives us a number of advantages. The Savushkin Product SCADA system is constantly being improved. It covers all processes - from the acceptance of milk to packaging and movement of goods to the warehouse, allows you to manage technological processes, production.

The development and technical support of the SCADA system is carried out by the company's specialists. This reduces the development time for automation projects and their adaptation to the needs of production; gives flexibility in any changes; 100% use of own resources, cost optimization.

All our digital solutions are easily scalable, modified for a specific project, for production sites and trade branches located throughout Belarus. This facilitates the work of technical support: standard solutions are used everywhere, the staff knows how to work with SCADA. At the same time, we can serve any of the branches remotely from Brest.

SCADA is a product completely developed by us, not purchased. This is especially true in the face of difficulties with the supply of components: we can quickly adapt to the availability of equipment on the market, make changes to the program.

The company invests a lot in the modernization of production activities, production volumes are growing, markets are expanding. The whole mechanism works efficiently. And SCADA is one of the gears that helps this mechanism spin.

- How can the digitalization of production activities improve the efficiency of the enterprise?

- Perhaps the most weighty argument here is the economic one. For example, we implemented a project on our own for a line for packaging curd desserts. It cost the company 2 times cheaper compared to ready-made solutions from third-party manufacturers and was successfully scaled up to all packaging lines of the dessert shop. Today, the implementation of APCS projects on its own costs 5-7 times more profitable.

This allows us to stabilize production costs, while maintaining the high quality of our products, which have long become a kind of hallmark of the Belarusian "milk" all over the world.

"Savushkin Product" is engaged in a noble business: it provides people with natural dairy products without preservatives and artificial fillers. Monitoring the quality of raw materials, maintaining the safety and naturalness of products, making them available to consumers around the world, delivering them fresh to anywhere in the world - digital technologies are indispensable here.

The scale of digitalization and automation of production is largely dictated by concern for people. A robot or program is capable of doing the work of dozens, and sometimes even hundreds of employees, without knowing fatigue, without making mistakes. Today, many production processes - both physical operations, and control, and accounting - are controlled simply by pressing buttons.

- Valery Vasilyevich, please tell us about other projects of the company in the field of digitalization of production activities.

- Among the successful solutions is the dairy product labeling project, simultaneously introduced in September 2022 in Belarus and Russia. In 2022, we applied a unique barcode on 1.3 billion units, thanks to which we track its further path to the consumer. All work on the introduction of the labeling system for dairy products was carried out on our own.

I would also note a joint pilot project for the exchange of electronic accompanying documents between business entities of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus using the mechanism of a trusted third party, a necessary condition for the supply of products.

- What was the main argument in favor of the decision to participate in the Leaders of the Digital Economy competition?

- First of all, this is the exchange of knowledge, contacts, acquaintance with interesting projects in agriculture, drones, energy. In principle, this is all that Savushkin uses in its local solutions. We ourselves are happy to share our experience with colleagues in a similar format.

The competition experts emphasized the innovative nature of the project: based on the digital model, a full range of Smart Farm technologies (IoT, analytics, robotic components) and Smart Farming, its own Scada system, robotic production of cheese and milk were built.

"Savushkin Product" is one of the strategic businesses of the SANTA group of companies - the leader of the dairy industry in Belarus, one of the top three largest dairy companies in the CIS.

Production is carried out at 7 sites that are certified in accordance with the highest international and national standards: STB iso 9001 - 2015, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and FSSC 22000.

Automation of production processes in the company is 90%. This allows us to guarantee the high quality and safety of our food products.

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