The example of a high-tech California vegetable processor proves that knowledge - Strength: The company uses data to improve line productivity, product quality, yield and profitability.
George Chiala Farms, a US-based agriculture and food company, is convinced that digitalization of production processes is a key competitive advantage. The company has become one of the many vegetable processors around the world who use the data platform TOMRA Insight. Have TOMRA Insight is well positioned to revolutionize the food industry by collecting data from sorting machines so that the information can be used instantly to optimize machine settings and subsequently to make informed strategic business decisions.
GC Farms specializes in making ready-made vegetable ingredients for renowned consumer brands whose products such as soups, salsa and frozen snacks are sold throughout the United States. The company has two processing plants in Central California. One of them is located in Hollister, and the other, as befits such a promising company, is in Morgan Hill on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, a global center of high technology and innovation.
Long-term success story
GC Farms is a family owned business founded in 1942 in the Santa Clara Valley. The company's first processing plant opened in 1984. GC Farms' two factories, employing around 500 people, operate all year round. They process over 54 million kilograms of vegetable ingredients annually. This requires about 68 million kilograms of raw vegetables: part of this volume is GC Farms' own crop, part is supplied by third-party producers.
GC Farms COO Charles Cutler explains: “The quality of each batch of our raw materials can vary greatly, but the quality of the final product our customers receive must be consistently high. To provide our customers with the quality they demand, George Chiala Jr. is pursuing a digitalization strategy that allows us to be at the forefront of the industry. ”
Cutler's job is to help make Chiala's dream come true. He notes: “As the industry moves to ready-to-eat products, our customers' expectations for quality are growing markedly. In the past, food quality meant food safety. Now it's about achieving product excellence. This is why we have made a big leap in the last couple of years from manual sorting to automatic sorting. This has improved the quality of our products, reduced the number of employees and stabilized our staff in general, and also reduced the labor costs of the staff involved in sorting on our line in Hollister by 75%. And it is important for our customers to know that we use sorting technologies from TOMRA Food, - this means that they can trust us. And the platform TOMRA Insight has allowed us to make the most of these machines. ”
TOMRA Insight opens up great opportunities
TOMRA Insight collects data in near real time and stores it securely in the cloud so that it can be accessed from anywhere using a computer or mobile device via a web interface. This data platform continuously measures the quality of the material flow of the production line, so operators can quickly adjust machine settings in the event of changes in material composition. And since TOMRA Insight provides insight that was previously impossible to collect, managers can now make decisions about workflows and business development based on more complete information.
The potential value of such information is enormous. Monitoring equipment health, improving condition-based preventive and maintenance management, and preventing unplanned equipment outages can help reduce downtime. Changes in productivity can be assessed to improve efficiency: for example, the process manager may find that optimizing the flow to the sorter squeezes another ton per hour out of the sorter without compromising the quality of the sort. Cost can be reduced by minimizing waste and increasing productivity: for example, GC Farms has found, by assessing the quality of raw materials in order to establish a fair price for them. Quality can be improved: for example, if the percentage of defects is higher than acceptable, the purchasing manager can join forces with the manufacturer to determine which defects were found and how to improve the quality of the next batches. More importantly, leveraging data also gives businesses a competitive edge in their day-to-day operations. GC Farms experience is a testament to this.
Increased processing speed and improved product quality
GC Farms' Morgan Hill plant currently operates two belt graders TOMRA Sentinel II and one belt sorter TOMRA 5A. The Hollister plant also operates one sorter TOMRA 5A, one Genius belt grader and a Blizzard gravity gravity grader. The company plans to install two new gravity sorters TOMRA 3C on the milling line at Morgan Hill, and TOMRA 5C as a replacement for Blizzard by the end of 2021. Cutler says: “We get a lot of foreign material from the fields that is beyond our control, especially when growers use mechanical rather than manual harvesting. Cars TOMRA do well with it. They have significantly improved the quality of our products. "
Three cars in Morgan Hill and TOMRA 5A in Hollister were connected to the platform TOMRA Insight. This gave George Cutler real-time access to machine data from both plants. And in the first few months of use TOMRA The Insight Morgan Hill plant has already reaped two major benefits. One is improved line speed control, which increases line efficiency and throughput. Another is the ability to accurately assess the quality of incoming raw materials, which saves the company from having to overpay in cases where the quality does not meet the required level.
Cutler explains: “Whenever we had a really bad shipment of vegetables, we could discuss it with our suppliers by sharing a report with them. TOMRA Insight. This allows us to ensure that we pay a fair price for what we receive and can help manufacturers determine if there are any problems they need to solve in order to improve their workflows and increase profits. "
In addition to drawing up reports on the percentage of defects in the form of diagrams, TOMRA Insight also allows users to generate reports that are specific to batches rather than specific time frames. Automatic reporting is coming soon to make it easier to access and view data. With its help, you can specify the number of requirements for which reporting will be performed, the frequency of reports and the e-mail addresses to which they should be automatically sent.
Platform TOMRA Insight immediately improves line efficiency - a feature most valued at GC Farms. Says Cutler: “It's great to see so much data on the quality of our raw materials in real time. And the way they are optimized and filtered in an easy-to-read dashboard allows us to make decisions almost instantly. We can now stabilize the line speed to optimize raw materials. For any hint of raw material problems, I immediately view Insight data, often just from my phone. This information tells us if we need to make adjustments to the line, and then the newly collected data tells us if the measures are working. Therefore, we don't have to guess or wait until the run is over to see what happened.
I expected that TOMRA Insight will immediately prove its worth in action. Over time, it will become even more powerful, because TOMRA regularly advises users about their needs and adds new features and capabilities. The latest updates include batch reports, defect percentages charts, imperial to metric conversions including unit weights, and usability improvements to help us get the most out of our data.
Even though new updates are still in development, TOMRA Insight has already exceeded my expectations. With and acting on the data, we improve our production lines, improve the quality of our products and increase our bottom line. ”
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