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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

Digitalization Transformation to Innovate New Product

With the help of: Puerto Rico Manufacturing Extension Inc. (PRiMEX)

About

Campolor Inc is a family-owned Puerto Rican company founded by its president, Mr. Melvin Arroyo, at his residence in Villalba. Thanks to hard work and continuous growth, they moved their facilities to the industrial sector of Ponce where they manufacture a variety of products from sofritos, sauces, appetizers, garlic and plastic packaging for use and sale to other companies. The raw material is mainly supplied by local farmers. In addition to manufacturing their own products, they also package products from other local brands and distribute fresh produce around Puerto Rico. Today the organization employs 45 workers.

The Challenge

Campolor was having problems with inventory control due to non-real time supply chain data collection. Departments were using manual excel spreadsheets and other software that were not interconnected. Inefficiencies resulted from the double data entry in multiple systems. In addition, all the US FDA food safety regulatory (FSMA) batch record information was created and maintained manually, which was time consuming and prone to errors. Campolor was also looking for automatic machinery to make a new product (powder sofrito) but lacked the resources and time for technical research.
Thanks to the consulting services provided by PRiMEX we were able to identify an opportunity for improvement that will help us to have better efficiency and productivity for our company. That is going to make us more competitive in the market and enable continuous growth and new jobs creation in our country.  The acquisition of new technologies and software will help us to carry out the FSMA documentation much easier and that time savings will help us spend time in creating new projects. If it were not for PRiMEX, it would have been difficult to get the resources that were provided. We are incredibly grateful since PRiMEX is part of our success.
— Mr. Melvin Arroyo, Founder and President

MEP's Role

PRiMEX, part of the MEP National Network™, invited Mr. Elvin Arroyo, to participate in the Rolling Competitive Award Program that assists companies on food safety plans and Industry 4.0 advanced technologies. Mr. Arroyo agreed to participate. As part of the Industry 4.0 program, PRiMEX performed a readiness assessment of the nine technologies associated with Industry 4.0 (IoT, additive manufacturing, robotics, big data and data analytics, cybersecurity, cloud computing, horizontal and vertical integration, augmented reality, simulation).

After the assessment PRiMEX submitted a report with the current situation and a roadmap with short term goals to keep moving forward towards and closing the gap in digital transformation, including the benefits of acquiring new technologies. As Mr. Arroyo was very interested in improving supply chain data collection and purchasing new equipment for a new product, PRiMEX presented a proposal to help with scouting interconnected data systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) system software and automated equipment for the new product. PRiMEX coordinated and facilitated all the meetings with potential expert vendors.

Created July 28, 2021