Common Mistakes at the Time of Implementation in Dairy Industry
“Mistakes made at the time of implementation can lead to inefficiency, low productivity and occurrence of quality hazards.”
A dairy plant consists of more than one process area, e.g. Reception, production and cold storage. Each area has a its own configuration of one or more Process Controllers and they will often have a User Interface for operators, handling product transfer from one process area to the other. However, sometimes there are few commonly made mistakes which can lead to inefficiency, less productivity and occurrence of quality hazards.
Poorly designed Process Line
Project engineering always involves a compromise between different requirements such as
- Product-related – concerning the raw material, its treatment and the quality of the end product
- Process-related – concerning plant capacity, selection of components and their compatibility, availability of heating and cooling media, etc.
- Economic – that the total cost of production to meet the stipulated quality standards is as low as possible
- Legal – legislation stipulating process parameters as well as choice of components and system solutions
Common mistakes made while designing a process line include:
I. Not standardizing the methods for quality analysis of raw material and finished goods which in turn leads to inconsistency in the final result
II. Choosing the wrong equipment for processing; for instance, not calculating the dimensions and the capacity of the required heat exchanger properly
III. Piping system not designed to meet the quality needs. For instance, the product velocity through the pipes is determined by the size of the passage, i.e. the inside diameter of the pipe. The larger the diameter, the lower the product velocity. So it seems reasonable to choose larger pipe size but larger pipes mean larger components and greatly increased costs.
“A functional problem, which often impedes implementation of SOPs, is that the monitoring and record keeping program may be cumbersome, ill-conceived, or ineffective. Supervision and appropriate chain of responsibility checks are imperative to effective implementation of any SOP.”
Few of the steps you can take to fix up your Standard Operating Procedures:
1. Get an outsider to read your SOPs
2. Go through every procedure and ask why we do it
3. Go out and do the procedures according to the SOP
4. Use marketing and communication techniques to lift the readability of your SOP
SOP related mistakes
Typically there are SOPs for raw material procurement, quality testing of raw material and finished goods, manufacturing process, storage and dispatch of final goods.
Mistakes that dairies make in standard operating procedures (SOPs) are:
I. Distributing SOPs which are too lengthy and not concise
II. Not engaging staff in designing the SOPs
III. Sharing the ‘How’ but not explaining the ‘Why’
IV. Not training the staff to follow the mentioned procedures correctly
Inventory Mismanagement
Inventory is the biggest asset of manufacturing organizations. Failure in inventory management leads to chaotic situations in manufacturing plant and warehouses associated with it which in turn disturbs the whole supply chain of the products.
Five mistakes in inventory management:
I. Inaccurate demand forecasting resulting in an imbalance of demand and supply crisis
II. Failure in depicting demand trend paves out the way for other companies to jump in and capture the market
III. Not having a common database
IV. Not adopting an ERP which in turn results in delayed output and data with errors
V. Resistance to new technologies which affects the profitability, accuracy and quality