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Cloud computing -- it's quite a view

An ERP solution delivered over the Internet brings this aseptic juice manufacturer real-time visibility into processing, packaging, and the entire supply chain.

After the aseptic cartons emerge from the filling machine, they are collated and then sent through a case packaging system.
After the aseptic cartons emerge from the filling machine, they are collated and then sent through a case packaging system.

“Our strategy is to build a group of plants and integrate them together in a national footprint. The technologies we deploy are what will help us support that integration process.”

That’s how Dean McKay describes the philosophy behind a Minden, NV-based company called Q4 Integral Group. It processes and packages aseptic juice products in brick-style cartons sold under the brand names of Starbucks, Alaskan Airlines, and others. I haven’t met McKay yet, but his emphasis on the notion of integration is so relentless that when I do meet him in May, I expect him to be wearing a T-shirt with a neon blinking “I” splashed across the front.

The group of plants McKay refers to don’t exist yet, but Minden, NV-based Q4 is off to a great start with its first line. Operating commercially since April 2009, it consists of:

  • a plate-on-plate processor designed in-house
    a SIG Combibloc filler that erects flat blanks and aseptically fills and caps them
    Combibloc equipment that collates and case packs the aseptic packs

More intriguing than the hardware on the plant floor is the software that integrates it all together in one harmonious process-to-package whole. When McKay left the aerospace business he’d been in for many years and started researching aseptic processing and packaging systems, he assumed that the companies making the filling equipment would routinely provide the software that integrated their machines with the upstream processing equipment. That way, if a condition arose on one side of manufacturing that required the other side to modify its operation, this requirement would be communicated automatically. What he found instead is that the builders of the filling systems more or less assumed that things like temperature, flow, and pressure of liquid product exiting the processor would always be constant and optimized. Unfortunately, such constancy is never encountered in the real world. So in effect, McKay was entering a manufacturing sector where processing and packaging were not as integrated as he wanted.

But at Q4 they are integrated, thanks to an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) from Plex Systems. It’s delivered over the Internet in a format known as Software as a Service, or SaaS. McKay thinks SaaS (which is sometimes referred to as “cloud computing”) has some distinct advantages over ERP products packaged in more traditional software formats.

“One big advantage is cost,” says McKay. “We looked at more traditional ERP software solutions and, in our case at least, they would have been astronomically more expensive to implement.”

The software doesn’t even reside anywhere at Q4. It’s accessed over the Internet for a monthly subscription fee. The fee is based on the size of the company. This gives it inherent advantages where scalability is concerned, says McKay.

“If you want to scale up by adding another plant, you don’t buy another expensive software suite,” says McKay. “You do pay a higher monthly subscription fee, but it’s still far less than a software suite.”

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