Danone Promotes Efficiency and Makes Better, Faster Decisions with Matterport

Matterport helps us foster a culture of innovation and collaboration while improving decision-making. By using digital twins in virtual meetings, we can quickly convene experts to examine and discuss details involving our production lines. We’ve reduced the number of in-person site visits by company personnel up to 50 percent, helping us achieve time savings and reduce travel expenses.”

—Stuart Grace, digital innovation manager, Danone

Danone operates large food and beverage manufacturing facilities worldwide that include areas that are difficult to access. Strict safety and quality protocols mean that all visitors who wish to enter the production facilities must undergo safety and quality awareness training and wear protective clothing.    

“We needed a way for our teams to visit sites without having to travel, suit up, complete specialized training, or risk cross-contamination,” says Stuart Grace, a digital innovation manager for Danone in Wexford, Ireland. “Matterport is the perfect tool for this.”

^{Danone's Nutricia Factory in Haps, Netherlands}

Using Matterport Pro3 cameras, Danone captures its facilities in rich 3D imagery and produces immersive digital twins. Once given access, authorized users can virtually visit and walk around the production site using a standard computer or mobile device to view digital twin. “The digital twins have incredibly crisp images, all the 3D detail we could ever need,” says Rob Heijligers, an industry 4.0 engineer at Nutricia Haps, a Danone factory in the Netherlands that manufactures baby formula and other specialized nutrition products.

Faster Decisions and Lower Costs with Remote Site Visits

Danone’s experts live as far away as Poland, Japan, and even New Zealand, and sometimes the company has people from all these countries discussing the same problem at the same time. With Matterport, they can all see the same site synchronously, without the costs and time needed for travel.

“Matterport helps us foster a culture of innovation and collaboration while improving decision-making,” says Grace. “By using digital twins in virtual meetings, we can quickly convene experts to examine and discuss details involving our production lines. We’ve reduced the number of in-person site visits by company personnel up to 50 percent, helping us achieve time savings and reduce travel expenses.”

“Our manufacturing equipment system supplier is in the Netherlands,” Heijligers says, “and we’ve had multiple team meetings with them so they can see exactly what we need and where. If we didn’t have a digital twin to show them online, we’d be delayed weeks every time we need something.”

Teams previously had to visit in person and take measurements manually, and were often prohibited from going into certain areas. “Now we know in two minutes if equipment will fit,” says Grace.

In addition to 3D imagery, Matterport cameras accurately capture spatial data and measurements and incorporate them into the digital twins. Maintenance teams need to know how far apart machines are and their specific measurements, and they no longer need to leave the office to find out.

“Our teams can save several hours every time they use Matterport even if they only use it to look up measurements,” says Heijligers. “We average around four hours per day in time savings per site. Even better, projects are completed more accurately.”

Improved Accuracy, Efficiency, and Imagery with Pro3 Cameras

Danone started using Matterport with an iPhone, then upgraded to the Pro2 camera and finally the Pro3. Matterport Capture Services technicians recently captured a digital twin of the Nutricia plant in the Netherlands.

However, in Ireland, Grace himself captured six production areas, the warehouse, some third-party warehouses, and the dryer facility where they turn liquid milk into powdered milk, an extremely complex space that would be difficult to photograph and measure.

“I captured all the spaces here myself, without any experience in photography or video,” Grace says. “Both the software and hardware are incredibly easy to use.”

“The Pro3 camera produces excellent imagery,” Heijligers says. “It also does so faster than the old cameras. The image quality is consistent even in poorly lit, hard-to-access spaces.”

Immersive, Tailored Training and Storytelling

Danone uses Matterport’s tour features and clickable Tags that include embedded text and video to tell stories, aid in training, and create 3D documentation. With the collaboration tools and data layers, information can be filtered for different groups. The safety teams, quality teams, maintenance teams, and project teams all require their own sets of information. And they can add comments in Tags, making it easy for them to share information that isn’t relevant to anyone else.

“A VIP came to our factory, and we created a high-level virtual tour just for him so he could see the areas he couldn’t otherwise visit,” says Heijligers.

Looking Ahead

Danone is determined to help lead an industry-wide transition to a low-carbon economy; that is why Danone has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050 across its full value chain. “Not only does Matterport help us slash our carbon emissions by reducing travel, it also enhances training to ensure we all properly use our new energy-efficient equipment,” Heijligers says. “We’re constantly finding new benefits from using Matterport.”