Let's discuss foreign materials (FM) as related to frozen potato products including strips, other cuts, formed product, etc. FM is defined as anything that is not potato. You know the list: vines, weeds, wood, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, golf balls, bone, small animals, gloves, ear plugs, nuts and bolts, conveyor belting, rocks, broken glass. We even see hand grenades coming from the fields of western Europe!
We know that FM is unacceptable to any consumer. Just from a quality perspective: they are buying potato (and inadvertently the packaging it comes in), nothing else. If some percentage of the weight of product that they purchased is not potato, they feel cheated at best. And of course it can get much, much worse. If the FM is perceived to be hazardous to health, you know the consequences: often legal action is taken by the consumer, your brand gets into the media in a strongly negative sense, you recall product where appropriate (at huge cost), etc., etc. FM is extremely expensive to have in your product and it potentially harms consumers, and so your tolerance for it must be zero.
We use various mechanical means to remove what we can: washers, rock traps, scalpers and fines graders get out quite a bit of this junk. But much still remains.
Historically, we have applied humans to the problem, placing manual inspectors/trimmers in raw receiving just upstream of peeling, and in packaging just upstream of distribution to the scales. Problem is, we are finding out that humans are far from perfect (surprised?), and we put them in an environment where vigilant attention is challenging to achieve. We try to motivate them to find ALL the FM, but that is not practical... and we all know that, if we will admit to it!
The answer, of course, is in automation: inspecting the product stream with sensors that are consistently vigilant, that have zero tolerance for FM, and the performance to back that up.
Next time, we will discuss some of the sensors available, their benefits and drawbacks. After that, we will look at application: where do you apply the sensors in your line?
Until next time-
Tim
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Ban Foreign Materials!
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Do you have any idea how much it costs the potato industry per year for these FM-related events?
That is a tough question. I think many processors do not track this number, so it might not be easily available. But between product rework, recalls, litigation and lost goodwill, it must total in the tens of millions of dollars, if not the hundreds of millions.
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