OEE, energy monitoring and machine vision as the backbone of Poppies’ smart factory

With multiple sites across Europe, Poppies had grown fast. But their data landscape hadn’t kept up. Even when data was being captured, it lived in isolated machine interfaces, Excel sheets or paper logs. As a result, teams lacked a shared, real-time view of what was happening on the lines. Issues like unplanned stops, energy peaks or quality deviations often surfaced too late to act proactively. In a high-volume environment, that fragmentation limits both efficiency and the ability to intervene in time.

The shift didn’t happen overnight. Poppies and Vintecc introduced a series of targeted improvements that built on each other.

24/7 intelligent quality control

Quality checks for brownies, macarons and eclairs were fully upgraded. Each production line was equipped with industrial cameras and dedicated AI models trained on thousands of product images. One model inspects shape and texture, another evaluates colour, and others measure dimensions or verify product positioning in the tray. All of this happens within milliseconds and without operator intervention.

Defective products are intercepted immediately, resulting in a more consistent output and fewer manual checks. Operators can now focus on structural improvements rather than constant visual inspection.

Real-time OEE visibility as the new standard

Vintecc implemented a data acquisition layer that measures key production parameters in real time: performance, downtime, waste, overweight and more. Data is captured directly from the machines through reliable sensors and edge modules that standardise signals before sending everything to Capture. Manual notes and outdated spreadsheets are no longer required.

For the first time, multiple lines and sites — even across countries — feed into one central platform. Each line reports its status live, showing slowdowns, losses and bottlenecks as they occur. That changes the pace on the shopfloor: operators understand issues faster, team leaders can intervene before problems escalate, and maintenance gets objective insights into where improvements are needed. As a result, OEE can be raised based on facts instead of assumptions.

Energy monitoring that reveals what used to stay hidden

The energy monitoring system continuously tracks gas, water and electricity consumption. When combined with OEE data, inefficiencies become easy to spot — ovens heating too long, lines suffering start-up losses, or equipment consuming energy without producing output.

Poppies now sees exactly where waste occurs. Teams can link peaks to specific events and respond with targeted corrective actions. Energy shifts from being a fixed cost to an optimisable variable.

Capture as the operational backbone

Vintecc’s IT/OT platform Capture acts as the factory’s central nervous system. All data streams merge into one environment enriched with context such as timestamp, line, product and batch. This allows teams to uncover relationships that previously remained invisible.

Within Capture, Poppies can compare performance across lines, monitor trends and analyse where losses accumulate. It also simplifies root-cause analysis: a single click reveals which parameters shifted simultaneously, what preceded the deviation, and how it affected downstream processes.

The result is an environment that doesn’t just record what happens — it supports faster, smarter and more confident decision-making.

The improvements are visible on the shopfloor. Poppies’ production runs faster, with greater consistency and higher quality. Deviations are detected earlier, quality variation is reduced, and teams intervene more quickly thanks to real-time visibility across lines and sites.

Key gains include:

• Less waste, due to faster and more objective detection of deviations
• Higher product consistency, enabled by automated machine vision
• Faster interventions, supported by real-time OEE insights
• Improved line reliability, with fewer surprises and clearer root causes
• A single source of truth, shared across operators, team leads and quality teams

With the benefits of connectivity now clearly visible, Poppies is moving further. The goal is to connect all machines, lines and sites into one seamless ecosystem powered by Capture. The new generation of the platform will integrate IT/OT systems, data, decisions and improvement actions in one place — a true “factory of the future” that understands itself and adjusts autonomously.

Poppies didn’t look for a vendor — they looked for a partner. Vintecc works on the shopfloor, builds together with the teams, thinks along with operators and links data insights to concrete corrective actions. With expertise spanning sensors, machine vision, data engineering and platform development, Vintecc delivers not just visibility, but direction. For Poppies, zero-defect production is no longer a vision — it’s becoming reality.