Collaborative Development Through a Global Lockdown—and Beyond

When the pandemic brought travel to a halt, Spanish multinational snack maker Leng-d'Or was able to keep R&D going with its partners across the Atlantic, and do so securely.

Spanish multinational Leng-d’Or makes food pellets that are sold to other companies to make snack foods.
Spanish multinational Leng-d’Or makes food pellets that are sold to other companies to make snack foods.
Leng-d'Or

Since the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a slew of challenges on its own, it might be easy to forget what hurdles the food and beverage industry was already trying to overcome before being hit by lockdowns, labor issues, and supply chain calamities. Margins were already tight, making uptime essential. And climate change was already creating difficulties in the supply chain.

For Leng-d’Or, a Spanish multinational food company, supply chain headaches were already an issue, making supplies of raw materials like corn and flour less reliable. Leng-d’Or makes food pellets that are sold to other companies to make snack foods. Though it is unlikely a company that many consumers are familiar with, its products show up in a lot of the more familiar brands we snack on.

Always looking to innovate, updating recipes and changing formulas, Leng-d’Or has its scientists in Europe traveling several times a year to the U.S. to collaborate on new products. The company’s headquarters are in Barcelona, Spain, and all of its researchers are in Barcelona as well. “But we have big facilities in the States, and one of the biggest snack facilities in the world in the state of New Jersey,” describes Enric Cuixeres, head of information technologies for Leng-d’Or. And then came strict lockdowns at the start of the pandemic. “Our first problem was that we couldn’t travel into the United States because they had closed the borders.”

This drastically changed how Leng-d’Or operated. “Our concern is that we’re continuously developing new products—every day, every month—and we are doing tests, almost two or three each week,” Cuixeres says. “We are trying to develop new products and flavors, testing new packaging.”

Keeping collaboration lines open

As luck would have it, Leng-d’Or had, just a few months before the lockdown, bought a RealWear augmented reality solution integrated with a suite of Webex capabilities from Cisco. Although they hadn’t really made use of the technology yet, at that point, they jumped in with both feet.

Leng-d’Or is continuously developing and modifying products, requiring a close collaboration between R&D headquarters in Spain with production in the U.S.Leng-d’Or is continuously developing and modifying products, requiring a close collaboration between R&D headquarters in Spain with production in the U.S.Leng-d'Or“When the States completely closed, we sent the RealWear tool to our facilities in the states, and we used this augmented reality technology also with our cameras,” Cuixeres explains. “It was a very good thing for us because, without this technology, maybe we could not develop new products in the States.” He further explains that it’s advantageous for Leng-d’Or to develop products in the U.S. for patent reasons, and also to distribute products more readily to North American customers.

With the use of Webex Expert on Demand for RealWear and Cisco Meraki for smart cameras and sensors, Leng-d’Or experts in Spain could lead real-time changes to their machines in New Jersey. They could also collaborate with their U.S. counterparts in real time through the Webex app, exchanging drawings and formulas.

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