Turning a New Leaf

With a business model built on listening to customers, anticipating their needs and working closely with them to create new and innovative products, this food processing company is also the number one food service supplier in the United States. Customers  who  rely  on  its  pre‐packaged salad ingredients include several of the top fast food and restaurant chains.

 “Process control, not product control” is the company’s mantra, and it has used ASI DATAMYTE software for net weight control and measurement of seal integrity for over eight years.

 “We perform quality management by process control, at each step in the process, using ASI DATAMYTE software and data collectors,” says the company’s Director. “This is far more efficient than managing quality  by  product  control  which  focuses only on testing and controlling product at the end of the operation.

 “When you have the steps of any given process under control using SPC, you don’t have to invest as much time and effort on checking the finished product because you know the process that produces it is in control,” he added. “This gives you greater confidence in your quality and frees you up to pursue other objectives.”

The company implemented a new net weight control program in order to reduce giveaway while still meeting customer requirements. Vibratory feeders are used to level out the amounts of ingredients fed into filling machines and then into containers. Net weight or fill target is achieved within a certain tolerance, based on standard deviation. The software has to be robust enough to capture multiple measurements and has to be flexible enough to adapt tolerances dynamically to accommodate different bag sizes.