For breweries facing rising demand, tight margins, and labor constraints, increasing capacity is often seen as a long-term investment—buy more tanks, expand the facility, hire more staff. But what if capacity gains could come not from expansion, but from improving what you already have?
With smart factory software like Nulogy Smart Factory (formerly Mingo), breweries are unlocking hidden capacity by gaining real-time visibility into production performance. Instead of relying on manual reporting and gut instinct, brewers can use data to identify inefficiencies, reduce downtime, and make better, faster decisions.
Here’s how breweries are using production monitoring software to increase throughput without sacrificing quality.
How Breweries Calculate Capacity
In brewing, capacity is traditionally calculated based on the number of fermenters, their volume, and the average fermentation cycle time. On the packaging side, it’s tied to the speed of the canning or bottling lines, changeover times, and hours available for operation.
While these calculations provide a baseline, they don’t capture real-world fluctuations caused by unplanned downtime, yield losses, or inconsistent line performance. A brewery might have the tank space or packaging equipment to produce more beer—but if processes aren’t running efficiently, true capacity falls short of the theoretical maximum.
This is why many breweries, from regional craft operations to large-scale producers, are turning to production monitoring software. Nulogy Smart Factory collects real-time data on line performance, downtime, cycle time, and yield—helping breweries compare actual vs. potential output across every step of the process.
Common Causes of Diminished or Constrained Capacity
Breweries often face the same capacity constraints again and again. Some of the most common include:
- Frequent line stops or downtime: Whether caused by equipment failure, material jams, or operator issues, even short stops can significantly impact daily output—especially on fast-moving packaging lines.
- Inefficient changeovers: Switching between SKUs, formats, or labels can cause prolonged changeovers, which eat into valuable production time.
- Manual reporting gaps: Relying on whiteboards, spreadsheets, or end-of-day reports makes it difficult to understand where losses are occurring until it’s too late to react.
- Quality hold-ups: Rejected batches, rework, or inspection delays can clog the line and reduce throughput.
- Lack of visibility across shifts: Without a centralized system, it’s hard to identify performance trends or hold teams accountable for production results.
These challenges compound over time, silently capping how much beer can be produced and packaged each day. The good news? Most of these issues are solvable—with better data.
The Value of Real-Time Visibility for Breweries
Nulogy Smart Factory provides breweries with real-time production visibility—from brewhouse to packaging. By integrating directly with equipment PLCs or enabling manual input via tablets, Nulogy creates a live dashboard of what’s happening on the floor.
Supervisors, brewers, and packaging leads can see:
- Which lines are running—and how efficiently
- Why and when downtime happens
- Actual vs. target cycle times
- Packaging line throughput by shift or SKU
- Performance trends over time
Instead of waiting for a daily recap, teams can react in the moment. If the bottling line slows down or a machine goes offline, Nulogy immediately flags the issue, enabling quicker troubleshooting and less lost time.
How Mingo Smart Factory Helps Breweries Increase Capacity
By digitizing the production floor, Nulogy enables breweries to make smarter decisions, faster. Here’s how it helps increase capacity:
- Reduce unplanned downtime: Automated downtime tracking highlights the most frequent and costly issues, so teams can prioritize improvements.
- Streamline changeovers: Analyze historical changeover data to identify best practices and reduce variation between shifts or operators.
- Optimize line performance: Real-time alerts notify teams when performance drops below target, allowing for quick corrections to avoid falling behind schedule.
- Enable continuous improvement: With historical trend data and customizable reports, breweries can benchmark performance and set data-driven goals for OEE, throughput, or cycle time.
- Improve collaboration across teams: Whether it’s brewers, operators, maintenance, or management, Mingo creates a single source of truth for production data—reducing finger-pointing and focusing the team on solving real problems.
Increase Capacity Starts With Better Data
Increasing capacity in a brewery doesn’t have to mean building more tanks or expanding your facility. Often, it starts with improving visibility into what’s already happening on the floor.
Nulogy Smart Factory helps breweries unlock the full potential of their existing equipment and teams by turning real-time data into actionable insights. Whether you’re looking to hit tighter production windows, reduce downtime, or scale efficiently, smart factory software gives you the tools to brew more—without brewing more problems.
Ready to see if Nulogy is the right production monitoring solution for your brewery operation? Request a demo or talk to an expert today.
