A1 Bacon transforms production visibility with Busroot
From disconnected systems to real-time insight, Busroot helps A1 Bacon digitise operations, drive efficiency, and boost output by 14%.
Food Manufacturer
A1 Bacon is a dedicated bacon slicer and supplier, focused on producing premium pre-packed bacon for foodservice, wholesale, and retail across the UK.
Meat Processing
The Harlow, Essex facility features state-of-the-art automation and advanced slicing technology, supporting high-volume production exceeding 50 tons daily.
Harlow, UK
Located just north of London, the modern Harlow facility serves as A1 Bacon's headquarters and production hub. With a commitment to sustainability, reliability, and best-in-class manufacturing standards.
The challenge
Laying the Foundation for Smarter Production
Limited progress tracking, disconnected legacy machines, and no dedicated digital team made it challenging for A1 Bacon to measure performance and adopt data-driven improvements.
Little understanding of progress vs targets
Operators need to be made aware of progress. Management was reliant on supervisors to collect data manually.
Existing legacy machines without connectivity
Machines that are not able to communicate progress and would require expensive retrofit.
Lack of a dedicated digital team
An in-house team was unable to implement and benefit from industry 4.0 solutions.
From Zero Visibility to Real-Time Clarity
The A1 Bacon team use Busroot to visualise production and manufacturing KPIs that gave the operations leadership team the true picture of production progress in real time. The Busroot platform also provides asset utilisation and downtime detection via our industrial IoT sensor (Finder - Arduino Opta) connected directly to the seven production lines.
Large format displays give shopfloor teams a clear and accurate understanding of production progress against targets.
Busroot has transformed the culture at A1 Bacon, taking them from an organisation with little to no technology within the production process to a robust solution that has quickly become integral to the day-to-day operations.
60 days
Re-paid annual subscription
14%
Increase in production output
∞
Significantly reduced costs on packaging waste and machine idle time.
Automatic downtime detection
Busroot picks up changes in machine state and logs downtime instantly
Operator input & reason codes
Operators can quickly assign a reason - so you get context, not just a timestamp
Downtime categorisation
Group stops by type (e.g mechanical, material, planned) for clearer analysis.
Root cause analysis
Drill into trends to understand what's driving the most frequent or costly stops.
Visual timelines
See when downtime happened across the shift and spot recurring patterns
Real-time alerts
Get notified when a machine goes down - action can be taken immediately.
“Wow, I honestly feel like we're at the forefront of production - it's made us realise we've never actually known what's going on in production.”
Robert
Managing Director
“The team at A1 Bacon have been incredibly supportive of bringing new technology onto the shop floor. It’s fantastic to see such strong results delivered so quickly. I’m confident this is just the beginning of their digital transformation journey.”
John Newell
Customer Success Director
Ready to boost performance and cut waste?
Book your demo and see how Busroot unlocks visibility, accountability, and real-time action - without disrupting your operation.