The Challenges of Automation Processes in the Tequila Industry

por Servando Calderon Servando Calderon | Dec 24, 2021 6:14:50 PM

 

automatized bottling in Casa Sauza

One of the most common questions people ask me as a Casa Sauza manager is: how does the automation improve competitiveness? and how do you know when to implement it? Several factors exist when balancing the pros and cons and make the right decision. Discover how we do it in Casa Sauza®.

Why automizing the tequila industry processes?

RFF Labor To achieve a great competitiveness level, it is imperative to eliminate waste as much as possible. It is expected that the most significative is the waste of human minds in routinary, repetitive, and physical effort (RRF labors).

We have had important advances in terms of automation of the tequila industry, however, we still have an important amount of RRF labors that can be automatized.

The RRF labors are limited to the development of new skills, the acquisition of new knowledge, and the creativity of our collaborators. The RRF labors are dominated and automatized in such level that there comes a moment when they no longer require the operator's full attention, this doesn't mean that the process is not well performed, actually, it is really well-performed and it may give place to other thoughts and parallel activities.

A good illustration of this mind disconnection, happens when you learn to drive a vehicle: at first, the whole mind attention is directed towards the driving action, but as soon as this activity is learned and developed, the mind is no longer dedicated in 100% to drive the vehicle, this means that the person is capable of having other thoughts and ideas, such as talking on the phone.

You can even achieve such a confidence level, that you can perform other activities that may be dangerous like texting using mobile phones. Nevertheless, this activity can turn out to be so monotonous and boring, that it may cause somnolence in the driver, and make him lose the control of the vehicle.

Following this illustration and moving forward to the tequila production process, an RRF labor is the agave loading in the transportations, that may be a totally manual process or assisted with tools and vehicles. It is desirable to automatize this RRF laborl.

How can we evaluate if a process must be automatized?

To justify this reason, the impact will be evaluated in 7 performance dimensions:

  • Security: To improve the elimination of human exposure to activity.
  • Quality: We are able to improve the agave flow, avoiding its exposition to contamination, metabolization, oxidation or fermentation.
  • Environment: We can decrease the energetic consumption when balancing the production. Additionally, we can reduce the water consumption to avoid moves and unexpected agave storing in the production yards.
  • Moral. The collaborators are free to dedicate more time to improve the tequila production and at the same time, they can improve the 7 dimensions of the process in a continuous way through an infinite cycle. We are able to have time to develop and learn new things to increase our skills.
  • Delivery: The delivery must be always on time responding to the client's demands by the regulation of the agave flow avoiding an accumulation.
  • Productivity. Improving the collaborator's productivity transforming our workforce into powerful minds that are able to propose and improve the processes.
  • Costs. They decrease when we consume less energy and water, creating a sustainable and innovative culture.

The automation of the RRF labors regarding the agave production process is just one example of why to automatize the whole tequila industry. We will stay in contact to keep talking about this interesting subject.

I invite you to read the following articles to learn more about our Continuous Improvement System and feel free to schedule your guided tour visit to Casa Sauza facilities, where you will watch these programs with your own eyes.

Continuous Improvement at Casa Sauza

Automation Process of Agricultural Work

 

Click here for more information on Casa Sauza Guided Tours

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