Marel is a leading company in the field of food processing systems. Marel supplies equipment and software for the food processing industry worldwide. With their knowledge and services they are an important partner for major players who process poultry, meat, and fish into end products for consumers.

"Marel, together with Eluxis, has taken an important step in the further professionalization of its service organization. Our internal information and knowledge is now structured and recorded in a way that makes it easy to find."

Jeroen Wieringa, Marel

Request

The order portfolio has been growing in recent years, requiring greater commitment from the service organization to install and maintain machines. Marel trains new Field Service Engineers (FSEs) on the job. Experienced colleagues transfer their knowledge and best practices to the new employees. This has led to an increasing demand for structured, explicitly documented knowledge.

Marel has asked Eluxis to set up an information architecture that can be used to record knowledge about the installation and servicing of their machines. In addition, Eluxis has been asked to record this information in state-of-the-art instructions and manuals for a number of crucial machines.

Solution

Together with Marel, we mapped out the process steps, tasks, and desired information structure in a series of workshops. A clear Information Product Profile (IPP) was drawn up for the identified information products, which serves as a blueprint for the future provision of information for FSEs. This took into account the relationship between established instructions and training materials.

Outcome

Capturing specific knowledge in instructions provides support when training new employees and prevents errors during the execution of tasks. Instructions for pre-installation, installation, commissioning, and maintenance have been documented for two large systems (the MOS oven and the QX ring sausage line) and a smaller machine (the TRP forming machine). We worked with a team of writers and selected experts from Marel to gather the knowledge and record it in clearly structured documents. The training department then converted the recorded knowledge into online format.

This allows the target group to familiarize themselves with the documentation in various forms. The employees involved at Marel are enthusiastic and satisfied that this important business knowledge has now been recorded clearly and accurately.

In a follow-up project, we hope to use the architecture and recorded information, together with the FSEs from all departments, to arrive at an optimal mix that supports them as well as possible.