Case Study: Upfield achieves paperless commissioning, $300K savings and 70-day faster issue resolution with IFS (Poka)

How Poka customer Upfield commissioned a new paperless site

Upfield, a global leader in plant‑based foods with 14 production sites and 4,900 employees, relocated its Rexdale plant to a new greenfield facility in Bradford and faced a major commissioning challenge: 95% new hires, 70% new equipment from European OEMs, and only 5–10% of legacy work instructions reusable. The company used the move as an opportunity to pursue a paperless factory and build a culture of continuous improvement from day one.

Using the Poka platform, Upfield democratized content creation, filmed OEM sessions for training, and built an internal knowledge base of 250 work instructions in a year. The paperless approach and digital forms (10,000 completed) saved roughly $300k in external consulting, cut issue resolution time by about 70 days, saved 1,590 hours annually in form verifications, and enabled faster troubleshooting, stronger training capability, and data-driven decisions via visual dashboards.

Upfield

Arif Khan

Continuous Improvement Specialist