How Aurora Foods increased OEE by +23% — and why it took exactly 8 months

Aurora Foods — where the sauce is not industrial, but the manufacturing must be

Aurora Foods started in 2008 in a Győr home kitchen, where Attila Kovács and his wife cooked preservative-free premium sauces for local restaurants. Today Aurora has 34 active products, 18 target markets and a 2,400 square metre plant — but the recipes have certainly not got simpler. If anything, they have got more complex.

What others call beer, preserves or ketchup, Aurora manufactures in 24 different viscosities, 9 different pH levels and four different preservation categories — in many cases on the same filling line, with weekly rotations. This is an extremely complex industrial challenge, and by the end of 2021 Aurora had reached the point where growth and production capacity were pulling against each other.

The old machine couldn't keep up — and everyone knew it, but nobody said it

Aurora's production manager, Péter Fekete, quantified for the first time in an internal review in September 2021 what the team had been feeling for years: OEE was below 61%, nearly 40% of scheduled production time was being lost to planned and unplanned stoppages, and formulation changeovers were averaging 47 minutes — during which the line stood idle.

The root of the problems was not a single machine, but the combination: a 2009 linear filling head line sized for the original 6 products, a manually calibrated doser that was not suitable for the more viscous sauces, and a control system for which the manufacturer had discontinued software support in 2017.

Aurora did not want a fully bespoke, high-engineering-content system — the investment and lead time would have been risky for a 34-product portfolio. But standard catalogue products did not fit either: none of them simultaneously handled mixed viscosities, allergen-segregated filling requirements and 12 different packaging sizes.

Attila Kovács, Aurora's CEO, articulated the requirement at Nordexa's first consultation: "We want a system that follows the product — not a product we have to adapt to the machine."

Modular architecture: bespoke flexibility, proven components

Nordexa's engineers spent two days at Aurora's plant in January 2022. They did not bring a proposal — they conducted a needs assessment. They reviewed the actual formulation rotation, measured actual changeover processes, interviewed operators and documented the 2021 stoppage log.

The result: an NX-Modular 8-head filling line that covers 31 of Aurora's 34 products within a single configuration. The system is built from three main blocks:

• NX-Fill V-8 filling module — 8 gravimetric filling heads, 15–2,800 ml batch size range, ±0.4% accuracy. The filling heads are swappable within 3 minutes without viscosity adapters.
• NX-Transfer allergen-segregated conveyor system — physically separable track section for allergen-containing products, with auditable CIP run before changeover.
• NX-Control HMI recipe library — 100 recipes storable, one-button recall. All filling parameters (speed, weight, aeration, cycle) are stored in the PLC — operators have no manual calibration task at changeover.

The system was approved as a signed contract in September 2022, manufacturing started in Székesfehérvár in December 2022, and the SAT (Site Acceptance Test) took place in Győr in July 2023 — 8 months, within the committed deadline.

Eight months, divided into seven milestones

In numbers — six months after handover

Aurora carried out the formal evaluation six months after handover, in January 2024. The numbers were generated by their own MES system — not a Nordexa estimate.

In Aurora's first post-handover audit (February 2024, FSSC 22000 renewal), allergen segregation received zero deviations — an improvement over the previous year, which had 2 minor findings relating to the old system.

Installed system data

What does not show up in the numbers

Péter Fekete, Aurora's production manager, highlighted after the project closed what no single KPI shows: "People stopped guessing." Previously operators spent every shift wondering whether the machine would break down today, whether the given recipe would run through without problems, whether the fill weights would be right. That constant uncertainty created tension — and consumed the attention that quality needed.

The new system is not just more efficient. It is predictable. And in a plant manufacturing a premium food product — where the brand's single promise is consistency of quality — that may be more important than any percentage figure.