Case Study: The Hershey Company achieves real-time production optimization and global collaboration with Microsoft Power BI

Hershey enhances global brands and productivity with cloud technology

The Hershey Company, a global confectionery leader, needed to modernize collaboration and gain real-time operational insight across factories and teams. Facing siloed workflows and the need to optimize production lines, Hershey adopted Microsoft cloud solutions—including Office 365, SharePoint Online, Azure Machine Learning, and Microsoft Power BI—to connect employees, data, and systems for faster decision making.

Using Microsoft Power BI to stream sensor data alongside Azure IoT and Azure Machine Learning, Hershey built dashboards that monitor extruder temperature, torque, and pressure in real time and enable predictive optimization of production lines. The Microsoft Power BI–enabled digital workplace (The Conche intranet on SharePoint Online) also helped streamline processes, cutting 1,250 audit-management hours annually and saving a supplier team about 70 hours per week, while reducing maintenance costs and accelerating collaboration and training across the company.

The Hershey Company

George Lenhart

Senior Manager, Advanced Productivity and Collaboration