Tea Factory Software: From Green Leaf to the Packing Hall

Tea is made twice. First a factory near the garden turns green leaf into made tea in a single day: wither, roll or cut, oxidise, dry, sort. Then a blending and packing plant, often in another country, mixes teas from several gardens and puts them into bags, cartons and caddies.

Anyone looking for tea factory software or tea manufacturing software meets products built for one of those sites, and sometimes for one step inside them. This page maps the systems, says which record each one owns, and gives an order for buying them.

Fabrico sells the OEE and light MES part. The other rows describe product categories, with no vendor names.

The tea factory software map: which system owns which record

Some tea systems prove what was bought, made, tested and sold. Others show where machine hours went. Keep the two apart when you compare products.

How to judge each tea system

A demo on generic data proves little. Each system below has a test that only a tea business would set.

Green leaf intake and grower accounts

Leaf arrives from estates, outgrowers and smallholders, often several times a day, and every kilo turns into money owed. The FAO says smallholders are responsible for 60 percent of world tea production, so for many factories this is the busiest system they own. Test it with one collection day: leaf weighed at a buying centre, a deduction for water or poor leaf, a grower who delivers to two centres, and the month's payment run built from those records without a spreadsheet.

Factory processing records

Withering, oxidation and drying are timed steps that depend on the leaf and the weather. The records here are trough times, fan settings, roll or CTC passes, oxidation time and dryer temperatures for each batch. Ask the vendor to show a day's manufacture linked to the leaf intake that fed it, since that is the link a later trace needs.

Auction and sales records

Made tea is sorted into grades, packed into sacks and sold by invoice, often through brokers and auctions. Test it by following one invoice from the sorting room to a sale: grade, number of sacks, sample sent, price achieved, and the date the tea left the store.

Blend recipes and tasting

A packing plant buys invoices from many gardens and blends them to a taste standard that must stay the same all year. Ask to see a blend sheet changed when one component runs out, with the taster's approval and the new component's invoice number kept on the blend lot.

QA lab

Moisture in made tea, residue results and other lab checks should sit against the invoice or blend lot they came from, not in a folder by date. Ask how a failed result holds a lot in the warehouse.

ERP and warehouse

The ERP buys tea, sells packs and costs both. The warehouse system knows where each sack and pallet is and which ones are held. Ask how a part-used sack goes back into stock after a blend.

OEE and light MES

This layer reads stops and counts from machines that give a signal, and the operator adds the reason at the line. In a factory that means the CTC line, the dryer and the sorting machines. In a packing plant it means tea bag machines, cartoners, overwrappers and case packers. See light MES vs full MES for where the light layer stops.

Where the machine hours go, briefly

In the factory, the dryer is often the pace machine for the day, and a CTC line that waits for withered leaf shows up as starved time, not a fault. Leaf arrival peaks, sorting room jams and fibre extractor stops add up across a long flush. In the packing hall, blend changes with dust cleaning, filter paper reel changes, and short stops at the tag and string feed take most of the time. The station rules and a worked shift are in OEE for tea packing lines, and the camera stations in computer vision for tea packing.

Which tea manufacturing software to buy first

Start with the record that costs most when it is wrong. For a factory that buys leaf, that is usually the grower account. For a packing plant, it is often the blend sheet or the hours lost on the bag machines.

The type of site changes the order.

If the packing hall is where hours vanish, a demo can walk through a blend change, a reel change and a cartoner block on one shift timeline.

What moves between tea systems

Trouble in a tea business often sits between systems, where a number is typed again. Two links matter most: from the weighbridge to the day's manufacture, and from the sale invoice to the blend lot.

A bag machine counts bags, a cartoner counts cartons and the dryer outfeed can be weighed in kilos. Keep each machine in its own unit and convert for the business view; OEE units: bottles, cases and pallets covers the conversion.

Residue limits, and which system answers for them

Residue results are the record a tea buyer asks for first. In the EU, the European Commission's page on maximum residue levels defines an MRL as "the highest level of a pesticide residue that is legally tolerated in or on food or feed". The UK keeps the same regulation in its own form: Article 18 of Regulation 396/2005 as it applies in Great Britain says a listed product must not contain residues above its maximum level once it is placed on the market.

That duty falls on whoever places the tea on the market, so the lab result has to sit against the invoice or blend lot that was tested. The QA lab system and the blend records carry it. A line stop log never does, and no OEE tool should offer to hold it.

Worked example: one blend lot traced back to the leaf

A made-up case, not from any real packer. A buyer's test finds a residue above the limit in one lot of packed breakfast blend. The packer must find which invoices went into the lot, which factory and days made them, and which leaf fed those days. Each step sits in a different system.

The trace usually breaks in two places: at the blend sheet when a substitute invoice is added by hand, and at the factory, where leaf from many growers goes into one wither. Fabrico is not part of that trace. Its only input is when the bag machine ran and how many bags it counted. The OEE maths for a tea bag line is in OEE for tea packing lines.

Eight questions for any tea factory software vendor

Put them to each product on the shortlist, with a month of leaf intake sheets and one week of packing hall reports on the table.

Fabrico in a tea business: machine hours, not leaf or blends

Fabrico is a cloud OEE and light MES platform. In tea it covers two places:

• Processing machines with a signal: on the CTC line, the dryer and the sorting machines, stops come from the machine signal and the operator tags the reason, so waiting for withered leaf is booked apart from a machine fault.
• The packing hall: tea bag machines, cartoners, overwrappers and case packers each run as an asset with their own unit, and blend changes, reel changes and cartoner blocks get their own reason codes, shown in minutes and money.
• Hand stations: where gift tins or sample boxes are packed by hand and no machine count exists, the camera add-on counts output. Its video for a moment on the timeline is streamed on request, not stored in Fabrico.

Platform details, from exports to apps, are on the MES and OEE software page; the cameras are on the computer vision add-on page and in the FMCG camera guide.

Not Fabrico's job: leaf weighment, grower payments, withering and fermentation logs, auction or sales records, blend sheets and tasting, lab results, bag weight or seal inspection, and lot records. Those stay in the systems above. The production plan stays with your planners and the ERP.

For how tea fits the wider food software picture, see food manufacturing software.

What tea teams ask next

Is there one tea factory software that does everything?

A suite may offer leaf intake, processing and sales in one product, and a packing plant still needs its blend, ERP and line records. Ask any suite to show each part working on its own data before you buy it as one.

Does OEE software pay growers?

No. Grower payments come from the leaf intake and grower account system, which holds the weights and deductions. Line software only times the machines after the leaf is in.

Can OEE be measured on withering troughs?

Not in a useful way. Withering is a timed process that depends on the leaf and the weather. Measure the CTC line and the dryer instead, and book waiting for withered leaf as a separate reason.

Who should own the blend lot code?

The blending team and the ERP. The lot code has to carry the component invoices, so it starts at the blend sheet and travels with the packs. The line layer can show the lot that was running, but it is not the record.

Does Fabrico check tea bag weight or seals?

No. Bag weight, seal and code checks belong to checkweighers and inspection systems. Fabrico can take their reject count into the quality part of OEE.

At what size does a tea packer need OEE software?

When the bag machines run most shifts and nobody can say where the lost hours went. A plant that packs a few days a month usually gets more from blend and stock records first.

Want to see a week of packing hall reports turned into minutes and money? Book a demo with one blend change log and the bag machine shift sheets that go with it.