Foodmate Equipment
Three (3) new Foodmate OPTI Flow Cut-up Systems on 10”centers including ChickSort 3.0 weighing and vision grading software.
Scope
OBJECTIVE
The main objective was to increase quality and yield and to deliver a system that required less labor than the plant’s previous system. Foodmate was able to accomplish this with three OPTI Flow Cut Up Systems on 10”centers rather than the traditional four lines on 12”centers approach.
Foodmate and Fieldale were very dedicated to meet all of the goals of the project and worked collaboratively towards its success. The 10”center system was the first of its kind and it allowed the plant much more productivity and throughput capacity with only three lines in comparison to 4 conventional 12” center lines. Running the lines on 10” centers allows for more birds on the line because there are more shackles on the line. The lines can easily process 125 birds/min but the line speed is the same as processing 105 birds/min on 12”centers.
Results
A quality audit was completed prior to the changeover and all quality and yield goals were exceeded. What in particular stands out is a significant improvement in split breast accuracy. The plant reports an increase in A grade cutting accuracy from 80% to 99.5%. But all other cutting modules have also improved the plants’ yields and A grade pack out.
The project initially had one Wing Cutter Super Cut module but due to the big size variation, there was still some room for improvement, so at the suggestion of the service engineering teams at Foodmate, Fieldale added a second Wing Cutter Super Cut wing module as a test in one of the lines and as it worked so well, Fieldale decided to add that second module to rest of lines. Fieldale is very satisfied with results, management states that there was a learning curve, but the 10” centers was a good improvement. Fieldale also reported that interaction with Foodmate’s team members was excellent, “Throughout the project we have had some difficult conversations, but Foodmate’s team was very responsive, planning and reacting immediately in the face of any issues” stated Jerry Franklin, Plant Manager. When asked if this project caused any major improvement in their operations, Fieldale stated a significant overall yield improvement and the related lines uptime dramatically increased as the lines show no downtime.
