Tips for improving food manufacturing efficiency
Efficiency is at the heart of all challenges facing food manufacturers. Cutting costs and delivery times boost profits. Take these steps toward improving your plant and enhancing your efficiency.
Ready your plant for risks
You could lose your entire inventory to a broken refrigerator or chiller unit. Regular maintenance can prevent breakdowns, but you must be ready for inventory losses if a temperature control system stops working. Install backup generators to keep refrigeration units running in blackouts. Like the refrigerators themselves, the generators will also need regular maintenance to ensure they will work when needed.
Aside from keeping up your equipment to prevent failure, you can also invest in business loss insurance. Coverage under business loss policies includes product losses from weather events and power outages. If an unexpected event occurs, you'll be able to get back on your feet faster. Your facility's productivity will improve with the loss recovery from insurance, since the event will not set you back as far as it would if you lacked insurance.
Become more energy-efficient
Energy-efficiency reduces your operating costs effortlessly. Incorporate natural light into your facility to reduce the number of light fixtures you need. For the ones you do have, select long-lasting LED lightbulbs. LED lights use less power and last years longer than fluorescent or incandescent bulbs.
Food production uses more water than many other manufacturing plants. By cutting back on water use, you will save money. You can then reinvest the money you save into making your facility more productive.
Embrace predictive maintenance
Technology can help make your facility more efficient, even if you don't want to automate everything. Predictive maintenance saves both time and money by telling you when equipment is about to break down. You can plan repairs and upkeep more efficiently and reduce downtime at your facility.
Increase use of automation and integration
Automation enhances productivity by reducing errors and increasing uptime. If you have an older facility, you may still rely on human workers for processes that could be automated. Invest in automation equipment to improve efficiency. Train the human workers in other positions around your facility, such as running the machinery, so they can keep their jobs.
Reduce contamination risk
Recalls waste time and harm productivity. Instead of reacting to recalls, become proactive and prevent contamination in the first place. Food recalls are expensive. Manufacturers in half the food recalls have had to spend $10mn or more. To avoid contamination, only use equipment intended for food and drink manufacturing, which includes everything from cleaning supplies to air compressors.
Food manufacturer have many more factors to consider than other businesses. Though the industry of food and drink manufacturing is complicated, you don't need sophisticated algorithms to improve your efficiency. Take the steps mentioned above to make your plant more productive and improve operations.
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