Averill Foods ran a bottling line whose conveyor spine predated some of its operators. Bearings were failing weekly, and washdown took four hours because water pooled on every flat surface.

The constraint was brutal: the line could only stop for the ten-day holiday shutdown. So we built the entire replacement — 240 meters of hygienic FlowLine M2, three transfer robots, and a new SCADA layer — in our Rockford FAT bay, and ran it at rate with Averill’s own bottles for two weeks before a single truck left the dock.

Demolition started December 23. The new spine ran first product January 2, a day ahead of schedule. Twelve months on, the numbers hold: OEE up 34%, sanitation window cut from four hours to 90 minutes, and zero unplanned conveyor stops.

The lesson we keep re-learning: integration speed is decided in the FAT bay, not on the plant floor.