High production rate, efficiency and quality

Problem starts because it is not well defined. When I visited one food industry, found that owner is in trouble because processing cost is high. He started giving arguments that plant is running at its high capacity rate, system is efficient, quality is also at acceptable level but to maintain it, processing cost is high.

Since I was there as a doctor for them, I had to listen all those things. I simply asked that what exactly he is looking for, high production rate, efficiency or qualtiy, because all three components are very important for a profit making unit. He said, all. Then why he is differentiating all three parameters. If he is maintaining all three parameters, cost should be brought down to a certain level.

All three; in my views; high production rate with quality means high efficiency, even if you are not getting profit or loss of profit means some hidden process variables are affecting it, resulting high cost. So person has to look after those hidden process parameters carefully. Mostly people has concerned about those things which are easily visible or we can say they are not upgraded technologically.

For example, during flavouring of a product, mostly, mechanical systems are being used, where you have to set rpm of flavour feeder assuming that product feed rate is constant. This assumption "constant feed rate"  plays a major role for incurring more cost, it is a process culprit.

Technology is so enhanced but people are not awared; they can use dynamic weighing system to check or control the product feed rate, even it will provide feedback to flavour applicator to control the flavour feeding rate as proportionate to product feeding.

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TOLEDO white paper published in foodqualitynews.com