Manufacturing excellence: five that strive

Prepared Foods, June, 1997 by Steve Berne

Our economy is good. Business is booming. Food companies continue building new facilities and expanding existing sites all around the globe. Budgeted capital spending figures are up 5% to more than $16.7 billion compared to $15.9 billion for 1996, as reported in Prepared Foods' Exclusive Capital Spending Survey (April 1997 issue). Though a significant amount of capital is being spent on overseas projects, domestic projects are retooling and reshaping the way facilities operate in the U.S.

Operating trends vary widely, ranging from plants with niche market specialization to those offering a complete product complement in a particular product category. These innovative companies entered the industry based on the premise of: "Hey, I can do that, and do it better," and they proved they could.

1997's Five Fabulous Food Plants exemplify these trends. They vary in market segments including dairy, bakery, brewing, condiments and foodservice. Utilizing both national and international technologies, these plants are at the forefront of automation as well as corporate culture shock.

From having to schedule more than 1,200 SKUs to self-directed, self-managed work teams, or establishing family businesses from long-held traditions, we highlight these plants' unique approaches to production parameters and employment issues. See how each has attained manufacturing excellence.

Make Mine a Hefeweizen

Company: Widmer Bros. Brewing Co.

Location: Portland, Ore.

Total Plant Size: 110,000 sq. ft. spanning four buildings connected by under-street crossings. Total includes 36,000 sq. ft. for brewing operations, 10,000 sq. ft. for packaging and 25,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space.

Completion Date of Expansion: April 1996.

Cost of Expansion: $24 million.

No. of Employees: 140.

Products Produced: Seven year-round beers, three seasonal brews and hard apple cider. Two beer varieties and hard apple cider were introduced this year.

Volume: Approximately 122,500 barrels/yr., which equates to almost 3.8 million gal. Projected volume for 1997 is [+ or -]150,000 gal.

Architect/Engineers: Project architect: Mark Garvey, Portland, Ore. General contractor: R&H Construction, Portland, Ore. Brewing engineers: Huppmann GmbH, Kitzingen, Germany. Packaging engineering and design: E. F. Mariani Co., Systems Design, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Growing at near exponential rates, Widmer Bros., which has outgrown the "microbrewery" definition, expanded its operations last year with a 36,000-sq.-ft. state-of-the-art brewhouse and 10,000-sq.-ft. bottling operation. This "regional specialty brewery" now runs two brewhouses. Its smaller, older brewhouse, installed in 1990, is a 40-barrel, three-vessel system now used mainly for specialty brews. Widmer's new brewhouse uses a 250-barrel, four-vessel system. Full automation in the new brewhouse achieves improved safety, high quality cleaning and sanitizing, and better product consistency. Automation systems also enable a single brewer to oversee the operation. The project result is a virtual tripling of capacity with minimal added personnel.

Widmer retrofitted an old warehouse to house its bottling operation which includes both 12-oz. and 22-oz. glass bottles. Both new buildings, brewhouse and bottling, connect to the older brewery via pipes running within 40-in. diameter "master" pipes. These pipes are located under the street and allow transfer of beer and utilities between the various operations.

Process Automation

"Our new brewhouse is largely automated," says Sebastian Pastore, director of brewing operations who played a key role in implementing the entire project. "A Siemens S5-155 process control system monitors and controls the brewhouse with a second system loaded and ready as a cold standby. It has 1,000 discrete I/O points and 125 analog I/O points, with five remote I/O drops and two Siemens OP15 operator displays." The system monitors and controls everything including pumps, valves, motors, temperatures, flow, level, conductivity, pressure, dissolved gas, turbidity and other parameters.

"PLC control on the packaging side runs on an Allen-Bradley PLC5/30," adds Pastore. "It integrates the operation through eight A-B SLC500 PLCs located on various pieces of equipment."

Widmer's stainless steel brewing vessels measure 1320 ft. wide and up to 45 ft. tall. Its packaging line features a 500 bpm, 12-oz. capacity Krones filler and labeler; Hartness decaser and drop packer; Bevco table-top conveyors, rinsers and accumulation table; Video-Jet coding systems for bottles and cases; and Industrial Dynamics crown, fill level and full case inspection systems.

Three Industrial Dynamics' Filtec FT-50 inspection systems on the packaging lines employ gamma-based technology. "Each of the systems gives us unique and useful information about product quality," says Pastore. "The combined effect of the systems creates the quality control and production efficiencies we are looking for."

Primary inspection just after the filler measures the density of the bottled product at production speeds, and detects missing crowns. Widmer de-tuned sensitivity settings on the first Filtec system to accommodate the head of foam that naturally occurs just after the filler. This adjustment assures the rejection of gross shorts. Rejects are automatically removed downstream.