Pepsi Bottling Ventures Client Success Story

Pepsi Bottling Ventures gains significant time and labor savings with Brightly

Pepsi Bottling Ventures (PBV) is the largest privately-held bottler for Pepsi-Cola products in North America – manufacturing, selling and distributing some of the world’s most recognized consumer brands. Pepsi Bottling Venture’s Garner, NC facility has an impressively large building with a great number of machines and moving parts. Whether bottles are being air blown, filled, closed or labeled, they are always moving at fast speeds throughout the facility, making various different types of sodas, teas and water. So it’s no surprise that they have over 76,000 work orders in their maintenance management system to date.

This wasn’t always the case, though. In fact, initiating work orders used to be much more complex when PBV was using green sheets, essentially a paper system with spreadsheets, and manually handing them out. One employee had to spend about 20 hours per week organizing and managing these. The process became so tiresome and tedious that PBV knew they needed to make a change.

They decided to switch to Brightly’s manufacturing work and asset software, largely for its seamless implementation and ease of use. “The transition was quick and easy. Brightly means a lot to us,” explains Dale Stein, Plant Engineer of PBV. PBV has never had an easier way to create work orders, and now that it’s using Brightly, the plant can also see how much they are appending on specific equipment and projects. The ability to plan parts orders based on historical trends is another huge benefit that PBV sees from using the platform. It is now only a click of a button to understand where money in the facility is spent.

“Brightly has helped us better maintain equipment by clearly demonstrating when a change in maintenance frequency is necessary and the ability to add tasking is immediate.” Another advantage is that inventory is automatically taken out using the system and flagged to reorder.

When PBV decided to integrate Brightly into their facility as a permanent improvement to their maintenance strategy, they also integrated the use of tablets. The tablets provide a second way for technicians to enter work orders and they can choose which way they prefer. This option allows technicians to find an easy way for them to do their job and look at the tools in the platform in their preferred way. The software-loaded tablets provided PBV with better visibility, a user-friendly option, and ultimately increased the amount of work orders done while eliminating lost work orders completely.

Tom Wiza, Plant Manager and VP of Operations, explains that “Brightly has become a part of our equation for success. They are always coming out with new updates and integrating the feedback we give them. We consider them a partner and look forward to future successes together."

Brightly has helped us better maintain our equipment by clearly demonstrating when a change in maintenance frequency is necessary and the ability to add tasking is immediate. 

Dale Stein

Plant Engineer, Pepsi Bottling Ventures