Best Ways to Successfully Reduce Manufacturing Giveaway
The food industry is notorious for having high levels of giveaway in its manufacturing processes despite its lower-than-average profit margins. Reducing product giveaway is therefore an easy way to increase the profitability of food manufacturing facilities without requiring extensive investments or equipment overhauls.
MES software allows you to perform real-time materials management that may greatly lessen the amount of food product giveaway that happens on your factory floor. The following three applications demonstrate the power of this versatile manufacturing tool and give you a better idea of just how much lost product you could recoup by implementing such a system.
1. Recipes and Product Formulation Conformity
The first instance where food product giveaway usually happens is during the formulation of the product itself.
For example, the meat industry’s products are made of two primary components: the lean (which is where most of the meat’s value is derived from) and the fat (which is considered less valuable). A facility that is striving for the minimal giveaway must make sure that the final processed meat product contains the correct ratio of fat to lean that the recipe demands. Using too much lean will increase the real value of the product without increasing its sale price, leading to losses.
MES software ensures that food production deviates very little from the established recipe that you choose to use. If your facility creates a product that does not conform to the recipe, the software can send an alert to all relevant workers and supervisors to notify them of this discrepancy and prompt them to take action to ensure it does not happen again.
You can either download this recipe from an outside source or input your formulation into the software. You can also make adjustments to either type of recipe as needed. This gives you the flexibility to tweak your recipes over time if you discover a better formula or if shifting market conditions force you to alter ratios or substitute ingredients.
2. Establishing Consistent Package Weights
The packaging is another critical area to monitor for giveaway. Most food products are sold in units according to weight, but even with modern automated factory equipment, it is difficult to get this measurement just right. Each time a unit is packaged with a few extra grams inside it than it ought to have, you lose the value of those grams.
Materials management software adds transparency to the packaging process by allowing you to track the weight of each packaged unit that passes over your check weighers in real-time. You can also set parameters for the desired weight of units leaving each line, then create alerts that will notify you (or the supervisors you have working on the floor) if a unit’s weight significantly exceeds those limits.
These measures help to keep your packaging process as precise as possible and reduce manufacturing giveaway on finished products leaving your facility.
3. Real-Time Trend Tracking and Optimization
Giveaway doesn’t have to reach critical levels before it becomes a problem; even minor increases in food production giveaway can add up to thousands of pounds of excess product going to waste when you could have sold it and turned a profit on it. However, these small surpluses may not be significant enough to warrant immediate correction and may therefore go unnoticed during daily operations on the line.
MES software automatically records data on all facets of food production as it passes through your equipment. It can also help keep track of your staff and their production numbers, which can reveal subtle but still noteworthy problems like a worker who consistently allows too much giveaway during quality control inspections. Reviewing these metrics over time – whether that means monthly, weekly, or even daily – can help make sure that your facility is not trending in the wrong direction regarding giveaway.
You can also use these insights to fine-tune the operations of your factory, leading to benefits such as reduced downtime and less material waste which can complement the savings you achieve by reducing your giveaway.
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Giveaway management is a top concern for food production factories all around the world. Staying competitive in this massive global industry demands that you do everything in your power to keep this number as low as possible, and MES software is key to making this happen.
Matics provides accurate, up-to-the-minute reporting on everything that is happening on your factory floor. With that information at your disposal, you can easily minimize your facility’s food product giveaway and increase its profitability as a result. Contact us anytime to speak to a representative and learn how our product can help you achieve industry-leading low giveaway numbers at your food manufacturing facility.
