Tetra Pak (tetrapakusa.com) is transforming the way it delivers services to its customers through the use of breakthrough technology. Powered by Microsoft, these cutting-edge digital solutions will ultimately boost manufacturers’ efficiency, cut costs, ensure food safety and drive its businesses forward.

“Tetra Pak is thrilled to deploy these advanced digital technologies to enhance our unique technical services offering for the food and beverage industry,” says Pekka Matilainen, Tetra Pak Services VP for the Americas. “It’s exciting to make the latest innovations work to meet our customers’ most pressing operational needs.”

Through one of these new technologies, the Microsoft HoloLens, Tetra Pak is revolutionizing its issues diagnosis and resolution service to reduce machine downtime and productivity loss while securing quick resolution of quality issues for its customers. Armed with HoloLens Mixed Reality (MR) smart glasses, Tetra Pak on-site service engineers are now able to work “alongside” the company’s global experts specialized in the problem they are trying to resolve. This means that a service engineer can connect with the right expert, who then sees and hears everything in real time and guides the on-site work even when a machine is thousands of miles away.

Tetra Pak is piloting the service in 2017 with 50 HoloLens devices and plans to expand further next year.

Another innovation, the Condition Monitoring service, taps into performance data from more than 5,000 connected filling machines around the world to help food and beverage manufacturers prevent machine failures before they occur. Using the power of Microsoft Azure, Tetra Pak specialists can identify deviations and advise customers on their maintenance needs in a more timely and effective way. The new service removes the need for a standardized maintenance process while reducing machine down-time and lowering costs related to maintenance or unexpected failures.

Tetra Pak started a six-month trial in February 2016, supporting 17 customer lines with the new service, including 2 in Mexico and 1 in Argentina. During this period, downtime was eliminated by up to 48 hours for each line.

These new technologies and services are part of Tetra Pak’s expanded technical services offerings that include full plant solutions to help food and beverage manufacturers achieve world-class manufacturing operations.