Customer background: The three-generation coffee workshop encountered growing pains
The Café Heredia family workshop in the central production area of Chile has insisted on manual roasting and packaging of boutique coffee beans since 1962. With the third-generation heir Maria taking over, the number of online orders has surged, but the problems of low efficiency and high error rate of traditional manual packaging have become increasingly prominent. "Our workers have to weigh manually more than 300 times a day, and the packaging loss rate is as high as 15% during the peak season." Maria said frankly during the first communication.
Transformation opportunity: How can a device change the production logic?
After a field investigation, the Ply-Pack foreign trade team found that the workshop’s predicament is a typical example of the automation transformation of small and medium-sized coffee companies:
- The factory area is only 80 square meters, which cannot accommodate traditional large-scale production lines
- The average age of workers is 52 years old, and the acceptance of complex operation interfaces is low
- Coffee powder is easy to clump in the high-humidity environment of the coast, affecting the packaging quality
In response to these pain points, we proposed a customized solution for modular packaging equipment with "small space, low threshold, and high precision":
- Space folding design: The traditional 5-meter production line is compressed into an L-shaped three-dimensional structure, reducing the floor space by 60%
- Intelligent weighing system: The error is accurate to ±0.3g, automatically identifying agglomerated particles and triggering vibration screening
- Spanish voice guidance: Workers can complete the entire process through the two buttons of "Start/Pause"
Landing results: Double leap in efficiency and quality
Three months after the equipment was put into production, Café Heredia workshop's key indicators have improved significantly:
- Daily packaging efficiency increased from 120kg to 480kg
- Consumables costs reduced by 22%, customer complaints reduced by 90%
- Successfully connected to the local supermarket chain supply chain, order volume increased by 3 times
“What impressed us most was the details of Ply-Pack's South American localized service.” Maria shared, “They preset the Chilean festival mode in the equipment - automatically switching red and green lights during Christmas, and the workers said it was a 'breathing machine'.”
Continuous empowerment: From single point breakthrough to ecological co-construction
This time, the coffee packaging machine was The radiation effect of successful cases is fermenting:
- Ply-Pack and the Chilean Coffee Association have opened a "Small and Micro Workshop Automation Workshop", which has attracted 17 companies to participate
- The equipment configuration plan generator is online. Customers enter data such as plant size and average daily output, and get a 3D simulation plan in 10 minutes
- A technical service center was established in Medellin, Colombia, and the response time of the local engineering team was shortened to 4 hours
“We plan to apply for an appearance patent for this equipment,” Maria revealed in a recent customer visit, “It is not only a production tool, but also a ‘technological business card’ for tourists when visiting the workshop.”
