THE ROAD

TO 4.0

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
THE ROAD
TO 4.0
What happens when digital transformation meets ice cream
manufacturing? Antonio Tuccillo, Process Engineer and Digital Lead
at Unilever’s Caivano site, and his team tell Digital Bulletin how they
have brought the fourth industrial revolution to the Italian factory and
the impact it has had on its workers’ lives

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Jack Walsh

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía
VIDEOGRAPHER: Ewan Donaldson

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UNILEVER

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F
rom water and steam engines to
electricity and computers, the man-
ufacturing sector has a history of
constantly revolutionising itself. The next
step? Industry 4.0.
The fourth industrial revolution will bring
digital transformation and automation
into the manufacturing industry, with the
goal of creating the smart factories of the
future. One area that this transformation
will greatly affect is food manufacturing. In
fact, the market for applying technology in
the food industry is predicted to reach over
$250 billion by the end of 2022. This digital
transformation will see manufacturers take
full advantage of data analytics, IoT and
autonomous vehicles to streamline oper-
ations, make predictions and increase the
overall safety and productivity of the sites.
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Many companies have already taken the
first steps towards this vision, and Unilever
is no exception. The consumer goods
multinational has over 300 factories in more
than 100 countries, producing an enormous
array of products, from food and refresh-
ments to beauty, personal care and home
care. But even huge projects start local.
To witness some of the company’s first
transformative projects, we have to travel
to the south of the country, to a city 14km
north-east of Naples named Caivano.
“Caivano is one of the most advanced
sites at Unilever in the refreshment
category,” Antonio Tuccillo, Process
Engineer and Digital Lead in Unilever’s
Caivano site, and the face behind the
site’s digital transformation initiative,
tells Digital Bulletin.

The Caivano site is one of the largest
Unilever ice cream factories in Italy. The
factory was built in 1975 and it employs
up to 900 workers during its busiest
season. Over half of its ice cream produc-
tion is distributed within Italy, while the
remaining 40% is sold in Europe and the
United States. The site is known for its
innovative nature, as well as the large
range of ice cream products it produces.
Its handling of a wide variety of ingredi-
ents, including caramel, roasted nuts and
coffee, is a rarity in the sector.
UNILEVER
In fact, the factory is a member of Italy’s
Consortium Meditech, a consortium
formed by the largest companies in the
south of the country, including FCA, Nestle,
Boing and Hitachi, as well as research insti-
tutions such as the universities of Naples,
Bari and Salerno. The programme, funded
by a central government, combines the best
brains of both the business and research
world to support innovation in the area.
Because of this, Caivano is often the
testing ground for any Unilever innovative
products, and three years ago the site was
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Caivano is one of
the most strategic
factories we have”
Paolo di Giovanni
selected to lead the company’s ambitious
digitalisation and automation project.
“Compared to other industries,
Unilever is quite behind in terms of
digital transformation,” says Paolo Di
Giovanni, Works Director at Unilever’s
Caivano site. However, he explains that
this is not true solely of Unilever, but
also of the ice cream manufacturing
business in general, which has long
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relied on traditional business practices.
For decades, its operations have been
manual, without any need or desire for
automation. Nonetheless, the time for
change has now arrived.
“Unilever wants to cover that gap,” Di
Giovanni says. “To do that, we have built
a robust digital roadmap that covers
everything, from cybersecurity to the
most advanced applications.”
The implementation of this digital
roadmap began last year, and it is expected
to be completed in 2023. Its benefits are
endless. The transformation will support
the workers, freeing them from repetitive
and routine work and allowing them to
upskill, but also accelerate processes,
reduce operating costs and improve the
overall efficiency of the factory as well as
the safety of its operations.
Unilever’s digital transformation has one
key element: automation, and within it, the
Caivano site is a fundamental piece. It is in
this factory that two of the most innovative
digital transformation projects are taking
place: the robotisation of the site imple-
mented by Elettric80, and a digitalisation of
data and information systems carried out
in partnership with Engineering Group.
“Caivano is considered one of the most
strategic factories we have, because many
innovations are implemented here, with all
sectors and all technologies represented in
our production,” says Di Giovanni. “Since

2018, our factory has been a priority in
Unilever’s automation initiative.”
The journey to transform Caivano’s
logistics began with the installation of an
automated storage solution, and it has
significantly accelerated in the last two
years thanks to the collaboration between
Unilever and Elettric80.
Established in the 1980s in Italy,
Elettric80 specialises in the development
UNILEVER
of automated and integrated intralogis-
tics solutions for daily consumer goods
manufacturing companies with the goal
of facilitating the development of smart,
interconnected and sustainable factories.
Elettric80’s vast experience and high level
of innovation makes the company
a perfect fit for Unilever’s goals. As of
today, the Group has completed 300
smart factories and has installed over 2000
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robotics systems and more than 5000
laser-guided vehicles (LGVs) in different
parts of the world, as well as 35 high-den-
sity automated warehouses since 2016.
“We chose Elettric80 because their
solutions are customised, resilient and
reliable,” says Martina Rita Troncone, Site
Maintenance Coordinator at Caivano.“They
design projects based on customer’s needs
and goals, using their specific technology
and know-how to identify the most efficient
solution at the offset of the project.”
The journey to transform the logistics at
the Caivano site by employing Elettric80’s
expertise started in 2012 with the
UNILEVER
installation of an automated warehouse,
totally integrated with the production
cycle and automated with three trilateral
laser-guided vehicles equipped with
artificial intelligent technology. The journey
continues today with the installation of
seven more LGVs that handle material from
different pickup points and move them to
set positions between the production lines,
running in very narrow spaces.
“The type of solution that we have
implemented has been specially
designed to meet our needs for storage
and material movements in various small
places,” Troncone says.
ISSUE 30 9
 This requirement for vehicles to navigate
the narrow corridors of the factory - as
small as two metres wide - without
hindering operations and while ensuring
maximum safety for operators was one
of the biggest challenges of the project,
according to Troncone. The implemented
solution is highly reliable thanks to the
fact that all laser-guided vehicles are
equipped with safety systems, above
and beyond the international standards
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established by the regulations in force,
able to detect the presence of obstacles
moving along the path.
“A 3D-mapping technology designed by
Elettric80 teams that diagrams the actual
plant floor enables us to understand the
space in detail, to identify the correct
LGV trajectories and maneuvers, and to
anticipate any issues,” Troncone says.
Automating these tasks has allowed
Caivano to increase its efficiency,
 UNILEVER

of factory work. The operating of these

machines accounts for around 85 deaths
every year and over 34,900 serious injuries
in the United States alone. The human cost
of these activities is huge, and smart and
integrated automatization can significantly
reduce it, alongside costs.
“We have started on a transformation path
involving automated vehicles to reduce the
safety risk to our people,” Troncone says.
“Elettric80’s systems are robust, smart and
safe. They develop pragmatic and turnkey
solutions, as they have a real vision of how
to integrate their technologies within the
system already present inside the factory,
and they understand the cost of mainte-
nance. Furthermore, they support and
guarantee the implemented solutions over
time by providing 24/7 support.”
Safety, efficiency, and
collaborative partner-
ship: the automati-
sation project has
sustainability and productivity, by knowing
the quantity and location of all of its mate-
rials at all times, guaranteeing the total
traceability of the products handled, and
increasing storage density and product
availability. All this while also increasing
safety within the factory, both in terms of
human-machine collaboration and with
respect to operations and products.
The use of manually-operated forklifts
is one of the most dangerous aspects

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brought these huge benefits to the Caivano
site. But it is just one step in a much larger
path towards digitalisation.
“The most important need of Caivano
is to be competitive on the market, to
be flexible and quick to meet the market
demands,” Tuccillo says. “The best way to
do that, of course, is to transform Caivano
into an industry 4.0 plant.”
As Di Giovanni pointed out, up until
a few years ago, Caivano was only hardly
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digitalised. The factory had installed
a digital application to handle process
control operations but, in all the other
departments, the systems were not
smart and user-friendly. The automation
project was a huge step towards improving
this situation, but there was still plenty of
work to do to reach 4.0.
“We started the transformation with
automation in particular with the LGV
project,” Tuccillo says. “But the most
 UNILEVER

important thing is that, in parallel to the

automation that addresses and improves
the material flows, we invested also into
digitalisation of the information flow in
order to bring Caivano into industry 4.0.”
The solutions
But Unilever is not entering that that we have
project alone.
To do that, Unilever has partnered with implemented have
Engineering Group. With over 12,000
professionals in more than 40 locations, been specially
the company combines specialist skills in
next-generation technologies, technolog- designed to meet
ical infrastructures organised in a single
hybrid multicloud and the capability to
all our needs”
interpret new business models to bring
innovation to the ground. Together, the Martina Rita Troncone
companies have developed a call off
system that will handle all the information
flow of the materials, from the inbound to
the line supply, and integrate it with the
existing systems on the site.
“Thanks to the call off system we have
detailed traceability of the materials in
the factory and we have improved our
quality standard, reducing the risks of
human error in the material flow,” Tuccillo
says. “But call off was not just that. It
represents the pillar for the digital devel-
opment of the Caivano site. It is a really
flexible application that can dialogue
with almost every other software. Since
its installation, we have integrated the
app with almost all the other informatics
systems in Caivano.”

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The call off system is only one of many
projects that Engineering Group and
the Unilever Caivano site has been
working on for the past few years. In fact,
Engineering has become the supplier for
the digital system in the site’s process-
making area, helping Unilever Caivano
navigate the complicated path that leads
towards industry 4.0.
UNILEVER
“The reliability and the flexibility shown
by Engineering in this relationship has
been huge,” Tuccillo says. “This is the
main reason why we have decided to
work with them also for the digitalisation
or in the banking area and in the overall
site. We have chosen them not just as
a supplier for our project, but we started
a deep collaboration as a partner.”
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 One of the main goals of this collabora-
tion is the drive to digitalise the totality of
the site’s information flow, from planning
to production. The vision is to be able to
create a unique repository of information
that is easy to access, easy to use and
paperless. It is a huge project that will
see a digitalisation of most of the site’s
processes and, as a result, will reduce
manual activities, potential human errors
and delete all the paper archives.
For example, over the last year, this
project has allowed Caivano to implement
data analytics solutions to fully automate
the data that comes from the shop floor
and shipments and automatically control
dosage of ice cream according to the
demand, without human intervention. And
this is just the beginning.
“All of this could be only done thanks
to the call off software installation that
created the backbone for the digital
development of Caivano,” Tuccillo says.
“And the objective of this kind of project is
to take insight from data never analysed
before in order to improve the perfor-
mances to create value added and to be
more competitive on the market.”
However, Caivano’s digital and automation
transformation is not a story of machines,
but people. The digitalisation will increase
worker’s safety, eliminate all their routine
tasks and also simplify access to the infor-
mation needed to perform their tasks.
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“Digital helps to improve the physical,
mental and emotional wellbeing of
Unilever people,” Tuccillo says. “Our
workers can use mobile solutions to
have the right information in the right
location at the right moment. For
example, our forklift driver has a tablet
on their forklift where our call off applica-
tion is installed and he has whatever he
needs at his fingertips.”
Nonetheless, the biggest impact of
digitalisation for Unilever workers comes
in relation to their own job transformation.
The automatisation of the factory has
allowed its employees to upskill them-
selves and become “digital workers”
able to properly leverage all the tools and
solutions of a factory 4.0.
The benefits of this transformation
are undeniable, but they weren’t
always welcomed.
“To be very honest, when we approached
the digital automation transformation,
the reaction of people wasn’t good,” Di
Giovanni says. “This was simply because
they thought that it was something to steal
their job or to reduce the number of people.
However, when we decided to implement a
training programme, a very good package
in terms of upskilling and rescaling, the
consideration changed.”
This new package is part of Future
of Work, a Unilever-wide programme
launched last year to improve the working
UNILEVER

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Digital helps to
improve the physical,
mental and emotional
wellbeing of the
Unilever people”
Antonio Tuccillo

conditions of the company’s 149,000

employees. The programme aims to
support the upskilling of Unilever’s
workers but also to improve their mental
health and motivation. In less than a year,
it has proven to be significantly popular,
and successful.
“We have embraced the entire popu-
lation,” Di Giovanni says. “We have
dedicated the training not only to the
operators, but also to the technician, to

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the middle management without forget-
ting the leadership team. And this has
been really appreciated, as demonstrated
by the performance we had last year and
in the first quarter of 2021.”
Now, with a new workforce and
improved digital systems, Unilever is
looking towards a future that looks
brighter than it has ever had. But there is
still work to be done to achieve it.
“Caivano is one of the most advanced
UNILEVER
sites at Unilever in the refreshment
category but, to be honest, digitali-
sation is a journey that never ends,”
Tuccillo says. “Technologies are always
changing, improving, and our internal
processes also change and adapt
to respond quickly to the market
demand. Therefore, we always work
from a continuous improvement
perspective, always looking to the next
improvement to be done.”
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