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Improved control is recipe for savings

A Harford Control product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 8, 2005

Harford can now read brix measurements in real time, which in turn automatically adjusts target weights in the weight control system to further trim wastage.

Harford Control has had considerable experience with reducing manufacturing costs in the juice/drinks industry.

The initial industry goal almost 10 years ago was to improve packing yields and remove the mountain of quality control paper records filed away each week.

Data collected produced a production quality audit trail from which key performance indicators (KPIs) are produced.

Carton fillers have steadily increased in output, some with multiple heads each requiring individual adjustment - a far from simple task to maintain optimum control.

A combination of SPC techniques and training enables overfill to be reduced to an average of less than 0.1% while maintaining legal compliance.

These figures may appear relatively small, but an average yield improvement of 0.3% represents overfill levels of 3 tonnes of per week per million litre packs produced.

This represents an approximate saving of GBP 800 per week.

However for factories producing 5 million litres per week, this equates to GBP 4000 savings per week.

In 2005 new areas of improvement have now been investigated and these now include improved measurement and control of brix via Harford BrixLink software.

Working with a process-refractometer-manufacturer, Harford can now read brix measurements in real time, which in turn automatically adjusts target weights in the weight control system to further trim wastage.

Users preferring offline brix checks can also trim this wastage using new technology refractometers with much improved accuracy and reliability.

Practical improvements of up to 0.2 brix can often be made which, in turn increases yields still further.

Brix gains of 0.2 work through into 0.1% yield improvements which in turn saves a further GBP 267 per week, per million litres packed.

Therefore, in a 5 million litre factory BrixLink can save another GBP 1335 per week.

Meeting the demands of supermarkets means profitability is directly related to efficiency.

With typically accepted overfills of 0.4% and brix inaccuracies introducing another 0.1%, reducing such unnecessary waste, by 0.3% saves GBP 5335 per week in a 5 million litres/week factory.

This will contribute GBP 275,000 per annum to factory profits every year.

Harford offers a free, site process-capability-study service to accurately assess each factory on its merits to highlight the achievable level of yield improvement.

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