Almost everyone loves French Fries. They go with many other foods and are a staple in restaurants around the world. But while many people enjoy them, most never think of what’s involved just to bring those fries to your plate. 

The process to deliver fries that meet customer expectations is complex. The size of the potatoes can cause excess waste if too small. Blemishes and spots can create quality concerns and risk customer rejection. The amount of salt added has to account for shake-off. 

All in all, there are many variables to pay attention that demand proper resource management. Without effective strategies inefficiencies can significantly impact profitability. 

Enhancing Yield and Efficiency in Food Manufacturing

Food manufacturing faces unique challenges compared to other industries because of loss of yield during processing. Effective yield management has to address waste and inefficiencies by optimizing raw materials and processes. 

Many factors can interfere with yield management, including: 

• Ongoing and critical supply chain disruption
• Labor shortages
• High inflationary pressure on raw materials
• Increasingly strict compliance and regulation (including much higher traceability standards)
• Ever-changing consumer demands

Other variables that impact yield include the quality of raw materials, the type of equipment used within the plant, packaging formats, and broken processes. Operator skill and ambient conditions, like temperature and humidity, can also play a significant role.

But whether it’s due to legacy systems, patchwork siloed solutions, or home-brew processes and approaches, many food & beverage manufacturers deal with inconsistent, inaccurate data, and struggle to diagnose and fix issues within their processes.

These challenges combine to create a staggering drain on revenue and margins, and solving or mitigating them requires a new approach.

Leveraging Smart Technology in Yield and Materials Management

To achieve tighter control and better efficiency, food manufacturers are using smart manufacturing technologies for yield and materials management. This approach provides granular insight into individual processes like supply chain, quality, and inventory control so improvements can be made which deliver a powerful impact on the bottom line.

The critical component of this solution is the ability to accurately model, track & analyze the usage efficiency data of the inputs to the manufacturing process​. The common challenges listed above usually stem from a lack of visibility, so harnessing data means manufacturers can obtain rapid feedback on actual yield. This in turn supports root cause analysis and sets the stage for continual  improvement​.

Plex Systems helps you connect your entire operations so you can gain deeper insights for optimization. Smart technology gives you timely visibility and control of yield performance to uncover the various factors influencing it, including raw material quality, production machinery, and operator efficiency.

Here are a few of the ways Plex lets you drive yield improvements within an operation:

1. Materials Management - Smart technology allows you to track materials effectively from receipt to shipment. The platform utilizes advanced supply chain planning to identify areas of concern so managers can act quickly to prevent disruption from spoilage, expiry, and more.
2. Advanced Reporting - Modern facilities generate a volume of data that is impossible to track and analyze manually. Plex’s smart technology puts data to work with analytics-driven reporting that enables you to compare actual yield performance with expected yields and costs and highlight discrepancies. An example includes actual cost versus the expected cost, which lets you find the root causes of problems and act to prevent recurrence.​
3. Advanced Analytics - The Plex platform lets you model your expected loss by component and operation to drive precision in purchasing decisions. It also offers advanced “what-if” planning to allow for contingency planning.

Other benefits of the Plex platform that indirectly affect yield and help improve business processes include:

• Quality and Compliance - The Plex platform offers a best-in-class food safety component, including quality management and rapid lot trace, helping mitigate an increasingly complex and rapidly changing compliance and regulatory landscape. This means you can track materials effectively from end-to-end within the supply chain.
• Tailored Tools - Because many food manufacturers operate on a batch production basis, Plex smart technology offers a batch-oriented MES with detailed yield and cost reporting. This feature helps manufacturers perform root cause analysis to enable continuous improvement across the factory.
• Plant Automation - A smart technology solution ties in quickly to the platform, allowing you to record data on processes, equipment, and labor, and making it easier to track actual quantities used. This feature will enable you to drive process improvement, evaluate and improve OEE, and manage other floor-related operations to optimize them for yield improvement.

Future-Proofing Yield Management with Smart Technology

The demands on food manufacturers are only going to become more complex. But you can stay a step ahead by leveraging the best smart technology to create complete visibility and control to optimize your yield and revenue. Learn more here about how smart technology can help you manage yields and materials to keep you both competitive and productive.