Papa John’s Food Service (PJFS) ran 11 dough production facilities on paper. Quality checks, batch compliance, and raw material tracking all happened manually, with no real-time visibility across sites. During a presentation at GE Vernova Accelerate 2026, Eric Clark, Senior Manager of Continuous Improvement, and Kiyana Parsan, Project Coordinator at PJFS, described how the company replaced those paper processes with Proficy Smart Factory, a cloud-based MES, across all 11 Quality Control Centers (QCCs). The transition started with a two-site deployment where one facility adopted the system immediately and the other scrapped an entire day’s production because operators overlooked alarms.
Four Goals That Justified the MES Investment
The QCCs are part of Papa John’s vertically integrated supply chain, producing dough that flows through raw material storage, mixing, dough balling, proofing, and final cooling before distribution. The MES project had to cover every station in that sequence. The business case centered on four measurable outcomes: world-class quality through improved batch compliance and regulatory adherence, waste reduction by minimizing rework, yield optimization by reducing unplanned downtime, and labor efficiency by digitizing standard work and replacing paper at every production step.
Same Technology, Two Different Outcomes
PJFS started with a two-site deployment: a small-to-medium bowl center in Pennsylvania and a large New York-style (XXL) horizontal center in Georgia. The technology worked at both. Adoption was the dividing line.
| Pennsylvania | Georgia | |
| Facility type | Small to medium, bowl center | Large, New York XXL, horizontal center |
| Staff involvement | Included in solution design | Inherited expanded version without consultation |
| Deployment pace | Time and resource intensive | Much faster, without staff input |
| Adoption | Intrinsic; staff process-oriented, open to change | Operators overlooked alarms, struggled with compliance |
| Outcome | Immediate benefits and improvements | An entire day’s worth of product scrapped |
The difference was staff involvement. Pennsylvania’s team participated in designing the MES configuration and was hungry for the change. Georgia inherited an expanded version of that configuration without consultation, deployed it faster, and paid for the speed: operators overlooked system alarms, and an entire day’s worth of product was scrapped.
PJFS concluded that a repeatable change management strategy was required before expanding to the remaining nine sites.
Why Cloud MES Over On-Premise Infrastructure
Papa John’s adopted a cloud-first strategy for the MES deployment. Jon Brannick, CIO at Papa John’s, described the rationale: “Cloud-based solutions allow our teams to spend more time working with our business partners finding value in solutions, and less time worrying about maintaining the infrastructure.”
The plants had limited IT resources at the site level to manage servers or maintain software. A hosted SaaS platform removed that burden. John Brazee, Director of Operations, noted that cloud access gave him remote, real-time visibility across all aspects of operations, replacing data that had been available only on-site.
The MES solution, GE Vernova’s Proficy Smart Factory, connects all 11 sites to a centralized SaaS platform with an ERP integration layer at both corporate and individual site levels.
How PJFS Scaled Deployment to Nine More Sites
After the initial two-site test, PJFS built a structured rollout program with four stages: site assessment, site readiness, training and go-live, and hypercare. Kentucky served as the first site to develop the scalable project plan. Six sites deployed in 2025 (Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina) and three more followed in 2026 (Oregon, Colorado, Florida).
Velotic customer service managers worked with PJFS to develop a change management plan based on five drivers: awareness of the need for change, desire to participate, knowledge of how to change, ability to implement required skills, and reinforcement to sustain the change. Supporting materials included outcome maps, kickoff videos, project sponsor interviews, signage, training repositories, and success stories from earlier deployments.
The system operates on four MES pillars at each site: activities (hourly, changeover, and end-of-shift tasks), alarms, process orders, and raw materials. Each rollout followed the same stage-gate sequence. The assessment phase covered process differences, network needs, equipment requirements, and MES configuration. Site readiness included installing and configuring network and equipment, validating data, and conducting dry runs. Training included super user walkthroughs at the Kentucky reference site, role-based operator sessions, and coverage of all four pillars plus reporting and receiving. Hypercare followed go-live with dedicated support for operator, system, equipment, and network issues. Identifying long-lead activities early, particularly equipment orders, was a priority during each deployment.
What Changed After All 11 Sites Went Live
All 11 facilities now share a common MES platform. The PJFS team reported: all sites are audit-ready with full traceability, all sites follow common processes and recipes, error reduction has improved dramatically, and there have been no major quality excursions since the Georgia go-live.
Paper is gone from the production floor. Training and standard operating procedures are digitized. Cory DeAngelo, Director of Operations, described the operational shift: “MES gives us the ability to align to standards in real time because we can see if something doesn’t match correctly right away, and we get an alarm if it doesn’t. We’re able to address these issues in moment.”
Next phases include OEE and KPI dashboards, site scorecarding, exceptions reporting, visual management screens on the floor, and continuous improvement project tracking.
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This article is based on a presentation by Eric Clark, Senior Manager of Continuous Improvement, and Kiyana Parsan, Project Coordinator at Papa John’s Food Service, delivered at GE Vernova Accelerate 2026. Lucian Fogoros of IIoT World attended the event. AI tools were used to help summarize and organize the content. Reviewed and edited by the IIoT World editorial team.
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This article is based on: “Driving Digital Adoption on the Plant Floor: How Papa Johns Transformed Dough Production”presentation by Eric Clark and Kiyana Parsan at GE Vernova Accelerate 2026 (May 2026).
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why do MES deployments fail at some manufacturing sites?
MES technology often works as expected while user adoption stalls. At Papa John’s, two sites received the same Proficy Smart Factory system. The site where operators participated in designing the configuration adopted it immediately. The site that inherited a pre-built configuration without staff consultation struggled: operators overlooked alarms, and an entire day’s production was scrapped. The difference was not the technology but whether operators were involved before go-live.
2. What is Proficy Smart Factory and how is it used in food production?
Proficy Smart Factory is GE Vernova’s cloud-based SaaS MES platform. Papa John’s Food Service uses it across 11 dough production facilities, connecting them to a centralized system with ERP integration at both corporate and site levels. The cloud-first approach minimizes on-site IT infrastructure and gives operations leaders remote, real-time visibility into production data.
3. What is a good change management strategy for MES rollouts?
A structured change management plan built on five drivers has worked for multi-site MES deployments: awareness of the need for change, desire to participate, knowledge of how to change, ability to implement new skills, and reinforcement to sustain the change. Papa John’s used this framework across 11 sites with Velotic customer service managers. Each site followed a four-stage deployment process: site assessment, site readiness, training and go-live, and hypercare.
4. What results can a multi-site cloud MES deployment deliver?
Papa John’s reported that after deploying cloud MES across 11 dough production facilities, all sites became audit-ready with full traceability, all sites aligned to common processes and recipes, error reduction improved dramatically, and no major quality excursions occurred after the initial go-live corrections. Paper was fully eliminated and replaced with digitized training, SOPs, and real-time data for decision making.
