How Universal Nutrition increased manufacturing productivity by 12% in just 60 days.

Universal Nutrition is a leading sports nutrition and supplement manufacturer with 40+ years of experience serving athletes worldwide. Their commitment to quality and innovation has made them a trusted name in the industry as they produce, market, and sell their own brands across the globe.

The Opportunity

Universal Nutrition's packaging operations faced a common manufacturing dilemma that was holding back their performance: critical production data was being captured manually on paper by supervisors throughout each shift. This manual process created significant blind spots across their operations.

“We had limited data to help us drive improvements and make strategic investment decisions. We were constantly trying to complete detailed time studies on lines to get critical data points to help us make those key strategic investment decisions. But as the business grew this became more and more challenging.”

Tyler AcevedoOperational Excellence & Continuous Improvement Leader

A Missing Layer of Detail

Even more problematic was the lack of granular downtime data. When a packaging line went down, the team knew which line stopped and for how long, but had no systematic way to capture which component or why. Without root cause information tied to each downtime event, Universal struggled to identify patterns, prioritize maintenance investments, or address recurring bottlenecks quietly reducing their overall equipment effectiveness.

The Essembi Solution: Automated Data Collection with Sensors

The Essembi team helped Universal Nutrition deploy multiple sensors across each packaging line, with some lines now carrying up to 9 sensors monitoring different components throughout the production process. These sensors automatically:

• Measure run rates and throughput at each critical line component
• Trigger downtime alerts when no product is detected for a configured threshold
• Automatically capture the specific line component where downtime or other incidents originate
• Eliminate manual data entry for production supervisors, freeing them to focus on production efficiency

This sensor network is the start of a digital twin for each line, providing the granular visibility that was previously impossible with manual tracking.

Simplified Workflow for the Plant Floor

Essembi was designed with plant floor workers in mind: intuitive, fast, and requiring minimal training, which drove rapid adoption across shifts and eliminated the usual resistance that comes with new manufacturing software.

Built-In Intelligence for Faster Improvement

Beyond just collecting data, Essembi's native dashboards give Universal's leadership team real-time access to OEE, production run rates, downtime, units produced, labor costs, mean time to repair, production yield, and any custom KPI the business requires, all available across dimensions like work order, formula, and line.

The Results: Project Timeline

Universal Nutrition implemented Essembi in just 90 days across over 21 production lines in 2 plants. During the project, the Essembi team helped install IP-68 waterproof cabinets with Arduino PLCs in each production area, wired to sensors installed along each line to capture key real-time data.

Immediate Performance Gains

Universal Nutrition achieved a 12% OEE gain in just 60 days through automated monitoring and faster response to issues, a dramatic uplift that demonstrated ROI almost immediately: jobs get done faster with reduced labor costs, production capacity increases to support a fast-growing supplement business, and teams maintain operational excellence as new lines are deployed.

New Visibility Driving Strategic Decisions

Real-time labor cost per unit tracking enables better workforce planning, while component-level run rate analysis identifies bottlenecks and capacity constraints. Clear data on which line components drive the most downtime guides maintenance priorities and capital expenditure decisions.

“The 12% productivity gain in just 60 days was impressive. And what really changed the game was having data we could trust. Now when we are deciding where to invest capital, we are not guessing, we know exactly which line components are costing us the most and why.”

Tyler AcevedoOperational Excellence & Continuous Improvement Leader

The Next Phase of Growth

Building on the success in packaging, Universal Nutrition is expanding Essembi into their upstream bulk pill manufacturing areas, deploying scales as edge devices to capture real-time run rates and automatically detect downtime, bringing the same visibility, control, and improvement capability to their formulation and bulk production operations.