A production system built from inside a Sydney food manufacturer, in daily use for more than two years. It connects the machines, sensors, people and records that run the factory, and makes what they already know usable while there is still time to act on it. A bespoke system, not a product you can buy.
Nifty Foods, a food manufacturer in Sydney, New South Wales.
More than 45 staff. Approximately 6 million units a year. Chilled product, so refrigeration monitoring, traceability and compliance records are operational requirements, not optional extras.
Production, stock, dispatch and quality each held their own version of the truth, spread across spreadsheets, paper and people's memory.
Nobody could answer "how is today actually going" without ringing three people, and by the time an answer arrived it described a situation that had already changed.
The information already existed. Somebody knew the line was slow, somebody knew the cold room had been opened for too long, somebody knew tomorrow's order was short.
It just arrived too late to act on, and only ever in one person's head at a time. This was not a discipline problem. It was a movement problem.
One system that reads the operation directly rather than waiting to be told. Equipment, refrigeration sensors, the people doing the work, production records, stock, quality checks and the systems already in place, all feeding one place and usable across the floor and the office.
One entry updates every downstream record, so a number written once reaches everyone who needs it. An overnight pass checks hundreds of conditions and surfaces only the handful that need a person, ready before the first shift arrives.
In daily use for more than two years. Two checkweighers from two different manufacturers connected directly. Paid tools brought in-house one at a time, each one measured rather than estimated.
This was not a discipline problem. It was a movement problem.
Observation, week oneThree layers. Only the middle one was new.
Nifty called it Lumi, for Live Updates, Manufacturing, Insights. What it actually is, is a layer sitting in the middle of the operation.
Most of it already exists. The machines are already measuring, the checks are already being done, the people already know. It just stops where it is made.
One place where all of that is read, checked, calculated and turned into something a person can act on, or that the system can handle itself.
The back office kept doing what it was already doing well. Lumi works around it and feeds it, rather than over the top of it.
Nothing at the top or the bottom had to be pulled out. The machines carried on doing their job and the office systems carried on doing theirs. What was missing was the middle.
In another business that bottom layer is an ERP, a booking platform or a field service app, and the top layer is vehicles, or field staff, or a warehouse. The inputs change. The shape does not.
The overnight pass, as it lands before the first shift.
Nobody asked it for this. The checking had already happened by the time anyone arrived to wonder.
Catching a slow line while the shift can still recover it.
Normally you find that out at the end of the shift, in the numbers, when the run is already short and there is nothing to be done about it.
A sensor on the machine caught the drop and flagged it 25 minutes in, with a full shift left to make it back. Finding out in time is the entire game.
Two production machines, connected into the same system.
Nifty runs two checkweighers on different production lines, from two different manufacturers. Both are connected directly into Lumi and have been for the life of the system.
The machines were never the problem. They were already weighing every unit that went past them, accurately, all day. The information simply stopped at the machine.
| Machine one | Machine two | |
|---|---|---|
| Each unit weighed by machine | Yes | Yes |
| Manufacturer's own software | About $3,000 | Not available |
| Connected to the wider operation, before | No | No |
| Connected to the wider operation, now | Yes | Yes |
One manufacturer sold software to read its own machine, at about $3,000. We asked the manufacturer of the other machine. They did not offer an equivalent package.
So the purchase that existed would have covered one line out of two, and added another standalone system to the pile, with two lines answering the same compliance question in two different places. Both machines were connected into Lumi instead.
Their readings now sit alongside production, stock, quality and compliance in the same system, which is what makes them useful: unit counts, batch maths, production records, compliance reporting, live production figures, and a giveaway figure the floor never had on either line.
The machines were already producing the data. The missing piece was getting it somewhere it could be used.
The avoided $3,000 is on the money table below. It is the least interesting part of this. The point is that a machine on the floor and the system that runs the business are no longer two separate conversations.
The panels above are single moments. The walkthrough is the full shape of a system like this one: the morning dashboard, checkweighers, stock and ordering, maintenance, accounts and who is on site. It opens on its own page so it gets the whole window.
Read this correctly: the walkthrough is a representative build, not a window into Nifty. The company in it does not exist and every figure is invented. The measured numbers on this page are the real ones.
Realised savings separated from what is still in the pipeline.
Once the operational layer is yours, the tools bolted around the edges start to look like rent. They came out one at a time, and only what has actually happened is counted here.
| What | Status | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Container tracking, replaced with a built-in tool | Realised, measured | $2,179.13 |
| Checkweigher software, read into Lumi in-house instead | Realised, purchase avoided | ~$3,000 one-off |
| Inspection app, to be replaced | In the pipeline | ~$7,200 |
| Third-party automation tool, to be replaced | In the pipeline | ~$2,500 |
The two realised figures are the only ones being claimed. The other two are named because they are the next in line, not because they have happened, and they are deliberately not added together with the first two.
The larger return is not on this table and never will be, because it does not arrive as an invoice you stop paying: information moving without a person carrying it, fewer systems holding their own version of the truth, duplicate entry gone, and a problem visible while there is still time to do something about it. Owned, not rented. Built once, then it keeps working.
It is not a demo built to sell you something.
I built Lumi because I needed it to do my own job. Working inside the operation is what made it possible. I could see exactly where the information stopped moving, between the machines, the people, the spreadsheets and the systems already in place, and build around the way the factory actually worked rather than the way an org chart says it does.
Noti came out of that, and this is still the system it came from. Another business would not receive Lumi. Its system would be different, because its operation is different: different equipment, different people, different software already in place.
What carries over is the method.
Start with a free chat. If a Discovery day makes sense after that, you will get a roadmap you own, whether or not I build any of it.
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