Matcon News
Lean Powder Processing - The Key to Survival
The trend within the food industry is an escalating variety of similar products on offer to the consumer. We are all world citizens and want the ability to enjoy any style of food wherever we are. The result is supermarket shelves filled with a huge variety of products, creating an ever increasing demand for frequent product changes at the manufacturing level.
Most modern production plants built in the '90s employ a high degree of automation, but few have the ability to switch between product families efficiently. The “conventional” way to achieve greater flexibility is to reduce automation and employ numerous operators for simple, repetitive tasks. The problem with this model is that there are less and less individuals in Western Europe interested in production based jobs. More recently the general high salary levels have encouraged manufacturers to consider moving or outsourcing production to lower cost economies. Such a move however is not easy to realise and manage especially for small to medium size enterprise and the risk of failure is very high. Ever increasing transportation costs and the environmental impact of shipping produce around the world supports the argument for producing “high variation” goods close to where they are consumed. Maintaining research and development together with production is also more efficient.
Significant changes facing food processors over the last 10 years are being generated by increased levels of consumer sensitivity. The most widespread issue is the need to separate potential “allergens” (proteins, egg products, nuts etc) from other ingredients. Increasing ethnic requirements such as Kosher and Halal seriously limits the practicality of using conventional 'high volume' automated systems such as those adopted in the '90s. It also presents a significant burden in a manually operated plant, as the human factor has to be constantly managed to minimise the risk to product and brand.
LEAN production theory offers a superb compromise - embracing sensible automation and providing almost instant change-over times by applying “SMED” (single-minute exchange of dies). There are “smart” manufacturing methods available that when correctly applied bring benefits that far outweigh the apparent (and often non-existent) savings of relocating manufacturing to cheap labour territories.
Waste
In the world of Lean Manufacturing, avoidance of waste is the driving philosophy. The reality for traditional food processors is often the opposite waste everywhere:
- Overproduction - mixing more than ordered because cleaning is such a burden.
- Waiting - operators and expensive process machinery standing idle whilst other parts of the process are being cleaned.
- Inventory - customer requirements for rAPI d and “next day” delivery resulting in huge finished goods and intermediate goods storage.
- Defects - from human error or equipment cross contamination causing frequent rework or at worst, risking the company brand value.
- Transporting - additional transportation to and from inventory storage and between processes to meet 'peaks and troughs' of market demand.
- Over processing - technology selected on 'worst case scenarios' and applied to the whole as opposed to applying sufficient technology for the application. The 80 20 rule applies in many cases to both process technology and level of automation.
- Motion - unnecessary movement of people and product between processes due to poor process flow - additional motion being caused by poor plant / factory layout... Read the full article >>>
View Matcon latest news articles