Cereal Bars – Efficiency & Waste Improvement
Background
Lauras International was asked by a major manufacturer of cereal bars to carry out an improvement project in their largest cereal bar plant. Much of the product range had chocolate coating, either as a drizzled pattern on top of the bar and / or a skirt along the bottom and sides. In the months leading up to the project the plant kept having problems with chocolate temper causing significant downtime. Tempering is a heat treatment for chocolate to lock in the right crystal structure and getting it right is important for quality. Properly tempered chocolate has a nice gloss on its surface, a snap when it breaks and a long shelf life. The equivalent annual cost of the temper problem was running at nearly £70,000 and even though the most experienced internal problem solvers had been involved and discussions had taken place with the tempering equipment suppliers the problem had not been solved.
Issue/Problem
The line was equipped with the leading equipment for chocolate tempering, enrobing and drizzling, and the plant had many years of successful experience running chocolate. The problem the plant were having with chocolate temper normally started half way into a production run, at which point they could not achieve the correct temper index when checked with a temper meter. As the run continued the temper index was dropping even though all the control point temperatures were in specification and stable. To overcome the problem the line had to be stopped and all the chocolate in the system had to be reheated, which lasted 2 hours during which no production was possible. The problem was occurring on every run and had been doing so for 4 months although it had been an occasional problem up to that point.
Solution
The de-seeding unit was unblocked over a weekend and on restart the problem did not re-occur and has not happened since.
Benefits
- By eliminating unstable chocolate temper the associated unplanned downtime has been eliminated saving £70k per year
- The driver tree from the project is now available as a detailed problem solving guide in case further problems arise in future
- The function and importance of the de-seeding unit is now understood and controls are in place to prevent further blockage
- A temperature monitoring system on the out feed of the de-seeder is in place to give an early warning of any issues