As technology evolves, frozen food brands can reassess their workflows and change what isn’t working. Outdated equipment and redundant processes can severely hinder productivity and lose revenue. Nowadays, the advancements in automated equipment, most notably Quantum equipment, can simplify the food manufacturing process by increasing productivity and providing flexibility to production lines. The end goal is to improve your products for customers while improving business practices
Implementing streamlined equipment is part of lean manufacturing– an approach to manufacturing that encourages trimming down redundancies while increasing value. Here, we’ll explore lean principles in food manufacturing and how Quantum equipment can bring these lean manufacturing principles to your food production line. Lean production systems aren’t difficult to employ once you know where to start!
Lean Principles in Food Manufacturing
Lean principles in manufacturing can help organize your brand’s operations, and these principles include value, value streams, flow, pull, and perfection. The purpose of adopting lean manufacturing is to create better products and simultaneously enhance your brand’s operations. Let’s take a look at what each of the lean principles means and how your label can apply them to food manufacturing.
Value
While value can refer to realized gains, here in lean manufacturing for food, it means what your customer likes about your product. This also includes why they choose your product over your competitor’s. It may be the specific combination of ingredients or even the price of the product. Here, your brand can conduct R&D to find out what your customers like about your product. The versatility of Quantum Equipment allows brands to conduct R&D with minimal risk so they can continually create products that customers love.
Value Streams
The second of the lean principles is the value stream, which represents each stage of the life of the product, including how it’s made. Value stream maps allow frozen food brands to assess which parts of production cause the most waste. Here, your leadership can find redundancies or equipment that cause a loss in revenue, either due to low productivity or ingredient or resource waste. Quantum equipment is designed to increase productivity while conserving ingredient and resource usage in any production line.
Flow
Next up is flow. Flow in a lean production system alludes to the productivity of food manufacturing. For example, if the cheese applicator is jammed, then this prevents future pizzas from getting cheese and passing quality control. As a result, the team may need to either take the time to manually correct the topping errors or through throw the uncompleted pizzas away. In either scenario, the jam generates waste in time, capital, and ingredients. We design Quantum equipment to be easily maintainable and cause less downtime so brands can focus on creating great products with fewer errors.
Pull
As one of the lean principles, pull represents manufacturing products as needed. While traditionally manufacturing relies on predicting ingredients and products in demand, one small change in the market or food supply could cause tremendous waste or surplus. It’s difficult to gauge how many ingredients your brand needs or how many products it should make with outdated equipment. Quantum equipment provides the flexibility that labels require to adapt to market changes, avoiding wasted products and resources.
Perfection
Lastly, perfection in lean manufacturing represents a brand’s drive to refine its processes. Staying current in equipment technology can allow team leaders to find technology that can enhance production without extra effort or additional expenses. Our team at Quantum is dedicated to creating state-of-the-art equipment for labels to outpace their competitors. At Quantum, we prioritize both quality and productivity.
These principles can serve as a great guide to improve your products while simplifying operations. Now, we’ll talk about how to create a lean production system for your manufacturing process.
Creating a Lean Production System
Even though Toyota developed the lean manufacturing theory, it’s still widely applicable to the frozen food industry. Frozen food labels can create a lean production system for their operations by utilizing automated equipment and the expertise available to your leadership. Here are two important cogs of a lean production system for food manufacturing:
Identifying Process Strengths and Weaknesses
Tailoring your lean production system starts with asking questions to identify strengths and weaknesses. What does your team do well? How can your team enhance that to improve productivity? On the other hand, where can your team improve? What tools can your team use to achieve goals and quotas?
Synchronized Production Line
Often, leadership finds production line weaknesses in the manufacturing technology. Old equipment causes downtime and ingredient and resource waste, as well as a decrease in productivity. Different types of equipment can also lead to a disrupted production line, resulting in a loss of revenue. While any one of our machines can be easily implemented into an existing assembly line, we recommend fully automating with Quantum to create a streamlined production line.
Identifying strengths and weaknesses and synchronizing your production line is a great start to adopting lean manufacturing. While it may seem simple, it’s highly effective at transforming production. At Quantum, we believe in making lean manufacturing principles easy to implement.
Incorporating Lean Manufacturing Principles with Quantum
Frozen food labels can seamlessly apply lean manufacturing principles within their own manufacturing process with Quantum equipment and expertise. We offer industry-leading equipment and stellar customer service for all of our clients. We’re the most trusted name in the industry. Our experts are ready to help your team incorporate the tech it needs to streamline operations, without sacrificing quality or consistency. Quantum automation can bring your production processes into the future and remain adaptable.
Streamline Operations and Maximize Value With Quantum
At Quantum Technical Services, we help our clients adopt lean manufacturing by streamlining operations. Your frozen food label can focus on maximizing value without worrying about losing quality. At Quantum, your team will find the automated equipment and expertise needed to simplify the manufacturing process successfully. Contact our team today to learn how your leadership can implement the latest technology in food manufacturing to trim down your workflows.