Pandemic Era Lessons Bolster Global Snack Food Maker

Summary

Leng-d’Or, with headquarters in Barcelona, Spain, is a family-run multinational food manufacturing company that makes “snack pellets” for third parties who manufacture a wide range of crunchy snack foods. It has 300 employees spread across Spain, the U.S., Singapore, and Brazil supplying about 800 customers, 80% of whom are outside of Spain.

The company continually makes investments in R&D and tries to introduce innovation in all sectors of the organization. Its information technology (IT) department provides the technology infrastructure required to guarantee robustness and security, helping the company produce 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and drive compliance with industry standards.

Partners for advanced tech

Driven by the need for quality, security, innovation, and globalization, Leng-d’Or partnered with Cisco to meet its core values. In short, “The cost reduction in travel and time, as well as the increase in productivity associated with the project, was remarkable,” Cuixeres said. Now that they are able to again, Leng d’Or is traveling 30-40% less than they were pre-pandemic, thanks to the collaboration solutions.

Cisco used these advanced technologies in the project:

• The snack-food maker tapped Webex Expert on Demand for RealWear headsets, and Cisco Meraki for smart cameras and sensors to allow it to make real-time changes to machines—from a different continent. The technology also helps close the knowledge gap by connecting workers from the factory floor to experts at other locations, while keeping their hands free to work instead of holding a smartphone or tablet.
• Using Cisco SecureX cloud technology, Leng-d’Or was able to deploy an end-to-end security solution that spanned its network, cloud, email, and endpoints to keep the company running as its international supply chain went remote.
• From its headquarters in Spain, Leng-d’Or was also able to collaborate with its U.S. counterparts in real time through the Webex app and Expert on Demand, securely exchanging drawings and formulas.

Using the integration between RealWear, Cisco Meraki Vision, and a personal WebEx meeting room enabled the company to keep developing and testing products every day, even through lockdowns and travel restrictions. “It was a good thing for us because without this kind of technology, we could not develop new products in the U.S.— and it’s better for us to develop in the U.S. for patent reasons,” said Cuixeres. “We are developing new products and flavors and testing new packaging every day.”

Webex Expert on Demand is connecting geographically dispersed teams with equipment to achieve improved productivity and higher first-time fix rates while reducing physical travel, Cuixeres said. “A few months before the final lockdown, we bought the RealWear solution and integrated it using the Cisco Webex Expert on Demand add-on into our WebEx landscape. Our employees had been using Webex naturally as a system for the teams,” he explained.

“When our team was concerned with the U.S. closing its borders due to the pandemic, we sent the RealWear tool into our facility in the States,” continued Cuixeres. “We also use this augmented reality technology with our Meraki camera. With two cams and the RealWear solution, we could continuously develop our products without traveling.”

Network security also delivers uptime

The Cisco SecureX cloud technology supported all this productivityenhancing advanced tech with comprehensive end-to-end physical and cyber security. Leng-d’Or had suffered several cyber-attacks in the past, according to Cuixeres.

“If email domains are used to launch attacks, it could undermine that trust that took the company many years to establish,” Cuixeres added. “It’s a problem that can potentially affect every manufacturer. So we increased the attention we paid to protecting emails, as well as protecting the entire production process.”

The company did not allow the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting cybersecurity issues disrupt its workforce. The SecureX solution spanned its network, cloud, email, and endpoints to keep the company running as its international supply chain went remote. The employed solutions allowed Leng-d’Or to detect threats up to 90% faster.

“For us, the security and the compliance are a must because the trust between our customers and us as a company is one of the most important things,” Cuixeres said. “Leng-d’Or reduced the time to detect threats by 90%, thanks to the ‘single pane of glass’ provided by Cisco SecureX. During a one-week period, there were between two and five confirmed threats blocked. Along with that, between four and six malicious URLs from inbound email were blocked, and as many as four malicious URLs from the Cisco Umbrella virtual appliance or roaming client were blocked during the same period with Cisco SecureX.”

According to Cuixeres, during the pandemic, “our work would have come to a complete stop without Cisco technology. Developing a new product is a team job. A lot of people from different areas must come together. SecureX allowed us to collaborate across borders during COVID and know that we were doing so securely. Thanks to that, our business continued, uninterrupted.

_{This feature originally appeared in the ebook Automation 2022: IIoT and Industry 4.0 (Volume 3).}