Labatt Brewing Company

Food & Beverages

The Challenge

The Labatt Brewing Company in Montreal operates five production lines, making it the largest of its kind in Canada. Its workforce scheduling was still managed manually, a very complex, error-prone process due to the large number of departments and employees. Given the amount of scheduling-related grievances it received, Labatt wanted to modernize its schedule man-agement system in order to support the work/life balance of its employees as well as its com-pliance with collective agreements.

The Background

Founded in 1847 in London, Ontario, the Labatt Brewing Company is now part of the Anheuser-Busch InBev group, the world leader in the brewing industry. With 3,400 employees in Canada, it operates 17 distribution centers, produces approximately 10 million hectoliters per year (the equivalent of over 350 million bottles), and offers Canadian consumers nearly 60 brands of lo-cal and international beers.

The Solution

After thoroughly analyzing the problem that the brewery wanted to address, the experts at Spiria recommended a flexible and multiplatform web application solution. Given the large number of variables and the overall complexity of the processes specific to Labatt, development called for mathematical optimization, which would support constraint analysis and modeling.

This resulted in a functional efficiency previously unattainable with manual processing. Work-force schedule production is now an entirely automated process that fully respects multiple rules such as calling employees in the order required by collective agreements. Situation simulations are now possible to help managers anticipate various production scenarios. The application facilitates the temporary or permanent exchange of employees between departments, promoting workforce mobility within the company. Finally, Spiria's designers made sure to create an interface that is intelligible and user-friendly in order to simplify the tasks of Labatt managers.

The Services

Digital transformation
User Experience (UX) design
User Interface (UI) design
Mathematical optimization
.NET Web application development

The Results

Thanks to Spiria's expertise, the Labatt Brewing Company benefitted from a complete recasting of arduous and complex processes. The management of employee call lists, which was a headache prior to automation, is now flawlessly ensured by digital technology. This eliminated the number one source of complaints — non-compliance with collective agreements. Labatt has a scalable, simple and efficient platform that enables it to meet all production challenges on a daily basis and to see substantial savings. Three thousand Labatt employees in 26 divisions now benefit from the error-free management of their work schedules.

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