Ask the Pet Food Pro presented by Pet Food Forum is a series of chats that offers the opportunity to reach out to industry experts and ask questions that help people educate themselves in the pet food industry. The latest edition of Ask the Pet Food pro was about the total cost of ownership of pet food production lines, supported by Waldner North America. Given below are key questions answered by Julian Stauffer, CEO Waldner North America, during the webinar.
1. What are some of the basic startup costs that usually aren't accounted for?
Basic startup costs that usually are not accounted for are the daily production startup costs, which occur repeatedly in most operations. In general, there can be a lot of waiting time in starting up each piece of equipment in a production line, such as your extruder, packaging machinery, or processing equipment. When a batch of product comes out of the kitchen, the testing of the product in all of the processes to make sure it's being produced the way you want it to be produced can be a costly and time-consuming sequence of events. Additionally, when the product is ready, the packaging machinery produces the package-product combination and is honed in for an effective production run. Scheduling your production, such that the product is ready and the different pieces of equipment are starting up and aligned in a certain sequence will help minimize these hidden costs.
2. How should expected milling loss be factored into tco
?
So, I assume that milling loss is the scrap rate of the milling equipment, or percentage of product lost in the production process. This should be factored into the OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness of that equipment. OEE is essentially a multi component calculation of machine efficiency that factors in performance, availability, and quality. This calculation can be used for every single piece of equipment on the production line, and then you can get an OEE % for the whole production line. World class manufacturing lines will have an OEE of >85%.
- Performance is the actual run rate measured against the expected run rate of the equipment.
- Availability is the actual production time measured against the planned production time.
- Quality is the number of good products produced measured against the total product produced.
So going back to milling loss, you’re probably able to measure it under the Quality part of the OEE formula. It would be pounds or tons of milled product measured against pounds or tons of total inputs. OEE can be used for all pieces of equipment along the production line.
What is the impact on production cost of trying to efficiently produce new generation products in a legacy facility, that have just added-on equipment to create a new production line?
This is the ongoing dilemma that most manufacturers have. They are producing an existing product in a plant, and now they want to introduce a new product. Most companies trying to do this cost effectively purchase a new piece of equipment and try to add it into an existing process.
The major impact will not be the equipment itself that is being purchased, but rather, how it impacts your upstream process and the needs that you have downstream. It is often surprising how much a small change in a primary package or product can impact an entire production line.
4. Operations/supply chain is shifting due to increased e-commerce, completely different ways of shipping, operating, etc. (But not all shifting, some are still going to traditional retail channels.) Might also involve changing packaging. How might this impact TCO?
So going back to milling loss, you’re probably able to measure it under the Quality part of the OEE formula. It would be pounds or tons of milled product measured against pounds or tons of total inputs. OEE can be used for all pieces of equipment along the production line.
What is the impact on production cost of trying to efficiently produce new generation products in a legacy facility, that have just added-on equipment to create a new production line?
The shifting of the supply chain to e-commerce impacts TCO greatly. Think about the current way things are currently done in manufacturing. We load packages in boxes and then put them on pallets, or they get loaded directly onto a pallet and then shipped to a warehouse, which heads to a brick-and-mortar store.
With E-commerce this dynamic is changing. Instead of delivering brick and mortar, we are delivering to homes. There is a concept called SIOC, “SHIP IN OWN CONTAINER,” which means that companies are adapting their end of line systems to pack individual bags in their own boxes or put a case of cans in their own box and store it in the warehouse this way such that its ready for ecommerce orders. That is a huge shift from palletizing individual bags or cases of cups/cans. This makes for a very complex process downstream, which can be costly to implement.
Additionally, the packaging must survive a different shipping environment. The fill volumes or fill weights of products may need to change, or the packaging may need to change.
Pet food packaging solutions from Waldner North America
Waldner North America specializes in automated pouch filling machine for shelf stable cups, trays, pouches and spouted pouches for packaging pet food and pet treats. Waldner DOSOMAT technology is proven with over 100 varieties of wet pet food and pet loaf product. In order to support pet food manufacturers in dealing with stringy pet food products, Waldner developed the Wisk-A-Nozzle. This is the leading edge of filling nozzles designed specifically for “dripless” filling, which results in a clean seal to mitigate contamination issues. This Wisk-A-Nozzle offers fill-weight accuracy and assurance that pet foods will retain texture and moisture throughout the filling process. These nozzles are used for cup, tray or pouch applications. In all applications, the Waldner DOSOMAT packaging machines are manufactured to be reliable, robust, and to operate at 95% or greater Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
