Case Study: New Belgium Brewing Co. boosts OEE, halves downtime, and hits record production with AVEVA MES Performance

New Belgium Brewing Improves Performance with the help of Apex Manufacturing Solutions and Wonderware MES

New Belgium Brewing Co., a leading craft brewer, was struggling with limited real-time visibility into unscheduled downtimes, manual paper-based production logs, and bottling lines running at roughly half their theoretical capacity. To address these challenges, New Belgium expanded its Wonderware by AVEVA automation environment and deployed AVEVA’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES Performance) to capture actionable production data and improve process control.

With AVEVA’s MES Performance (integrated by Apex), New Belgium gained real-time monitoring, automated downtime tracking, and improved shift handovers, which raised OEE from 45% to 65% in just over two years, cut downtime by more than 50%, boosted scheduled run efficiency by about 25–30%, delivered consistent record weeks of ~190,000–200,000+ cases, extended packaging capacity to ~1.3 million barrels/year, and saved over $400,000 annually—allowing the brewery to defer capital investments and lower operating costs.

New Belgium Brewing Co.

Joe Herrick

Packaging Systems Manager