Case Study: Summer Garden Foods achieves reduced downtime and improved machine performance with Plex Systems

Summer Garden Food Manufacturing Reduces Downtime and Improves Machine Performance

Summer Garden Food Manufacturing, an Ohio-based maker of Gia Russa, celebrity chef and private-label sauces that produces up to 100,000 cases weekly, faced limited visibility into equipment performance. The team couldn’t easily extract reports or identify micro-downtime, leaving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and true run times unclear across two 12-hour shifts.

In late 2022 they implemented the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform to pull data from Rockwell controllers and other sources, enabling detailed downtime tracking on the filler machine and revealing 3–4 hours of hidden downtime per shift. That insight led to improved operator training, a real-time OEE visualization for operators, reduced downtime, better machine performance, and plans to expand Plex to more machines to drive further production gains.

Summer Garden Foods

Jason Morrow

Controls Technician