Labor Costs and Trash Reduced
for Food Products Manufacturer

Old California Sour Dough Pizza Crust & Mining,
based in San Francisco, Calif., sells a San Francisco style sourdough pizza
mix and spice blends that are shipped to over 30 states, Canada, Japan,
and Korea.  The food product manufacturer receives truckloads of ingredients,
including 50 to 100 pound bags of wheat flour, baking powder, malt,
powdered milk, basil, and parsley.  Granulated garlic, onion salt, black
pepper, and white pepper arrive in 200 to 300 pound barrels.  The
manufacturer also receives salt, cellulose dextrose, cane sugar, whey,
dough conditioner, and flour in 2,000 pound bulk bags. Pallet jacks or
forklift trucks transfer ingredients to mixing stations.  At each station,
a worker follows a recipe card to dispense the proper amount of each
ingredient into a plastic container resting on a portable dial-type scale. 
The worker dumps each weighed ingredient into a ribbon blender. 
The finished mix is bagged, sealed and moved by conveyor belt to a
packaging department where workers pack the bags into cardboard
boxes for shipment.

Manually Scooping Ingredients Causes a Mess

In the past, workers used large scoops to transfer ingredients from the
containers they arrived in to the individual plastic containers.  Manual
ingredient scooping required excessive labor and caused workers to bend
over as the containers emptied, increasing back stress. Ingredients also
frequently spilled from the scoops, wasting material, causing a messy
working environment, and requiring cleanup.  Also, the scoop method
impaired proportioning accuracy, reducing finished product consistency.

Each time a container emptied, a worker had to discard the empty container
and open a new one, which interrupted the work flow and produced trash. 
Trash became a concern, because the food product manufacturer would have
to reduce trash output 25 percent in one year and another 30 percent over
the next three years to meet local trash reduction requirements.

Manufacturer Decides to Switch to
Bulk Dispensers with Metering Valves

To eliminate the manual scooping of ingredients, the food products
manufacturer began receiving salt, cellulose dextrose, cane sugar, whey,
dough conditioner, and flour in 2,000 pound bulk bags.  The bulk bags would
empty into bulk dispensers with metering valves that would open and close
to dispense ingredients.  The food products manufacturer considered fiberglass,
metal, and polyethylene dispensers.

Some dispensers considered were opaque, which prevented external viewing
of the product level.  Other dispensers' discharge valves were inconveniently
located, but the polyethylene dispensers overcame these problems, according
to Ronald C. Yates, President of Old California Sour Dough Pizza Crust & Mining.

"The polyethylene dispensers are translucent," Yates said, "so product levels
can be seen at a glance.  The design allows the product to be discharged from
a dispensers' front section and not directly under the dispenser.  The dispensers'
valves are simple to operate, yet very effective in controlling product discharge."

Ingredients spilling from manual scoops created a messy work environment.  Bulk
dispensers with metering valves reduced spillage and waste by a factor of 10.

Manufacturer Installs 12 Bulk Dispensers

The polyethylene bulk dispensers come in various sizes, and the food products
manufacturer chose two 70 Cu. Ft. dispensers for cane sugar and cellulose
dextrose, four 54 Cu. Ft. dispensers for basil, dough conditioner, whey, and salt,
and six 20 Cu. Ft. dispensers for parsley, white pepper, black pepper, onion
salt, granulated garlic, and flour.

The 70 Cu. Ft. and 54 Cu. Ft. dispensers each has a screw-on lid on top of a
cylindrical upper section.  A cone-shaped lower section slopes to a patented
stainless steel slide-type-metering valve with a single pivot.  The cone-shaped
section angles forward so the metering valve discharges toward the dispenser's
front.  The valve discharges through a curved section of stainless steel that
directs material forward.  Each dispenser is mounted in a tubular steel frame
with two circular supports around the cone section and slots for a forklift truck.

The 20 Cu. Ft. dispensers each has a screw-on lid on the container's top. 
The dispenser has a square-sided upper section and a lower section with
trapezoidal sides converging forward to the metering valve.  Each dispenser,
which can be moved by a forklift truck, is mounted in a tubular steel frame
with a support on each side of the dispenser's upper section.

The food product manufacturer keeps the bulk dispensers on racks that elevate
the dispensers so workers can position the portable scales and plastic containers
just below the metering valves.  To fill a bulk dispenser from a bulk bag, a forklift
truck first moves the dispenser from the rack to the floor.  The forklift truck lifts
and positions the bulk bag, and a worker unties the bulk bag's outer closure,
exposing the sanitary liner.  The worker cuts off the liner's heat seal and screws
off the bulk dispenser's lid.  The worker then releases the bulk bag's inner
closure, and material flows into the bulk dispenser.  After filling, the worker
screws the lid back on and returns the dispenser to the rack.  The bulk bag
can be returned and recycled.  For ingredients that arrive in bags or barrels,
a worker fills the bulk dispenser from a platform at the height of the
dispenser's lid.

Bulk Dispensers Improve Operations

To operate a bulk dispenser, a worker positions a portable scale and plastic
container beneath the bulk dispenser and manually opens the metering valve,
controlling flow rate and cutting off flow when the desired amount is dispensed.

Using the bulk dispenser system has cut labor costs by 12 percent to 15 percent.
Ingredients no longer spill from the scoops, which has reduced spillage and waste
by a factor of 10 and has provided a cleaner working environment.  The bulk
dispensers' valves provide better ingredient proportioning accuracy than the
scoops, which has improved finished product consistency.

Work flow is no longer interrupted by frequent switching between ingredient bags. 
Filling the bulk dispensers occurs much less frequently and takes five minutes
or less. Trash output has been reduced more than 50 percent, exceeding local
trash reduction requirements.  Worker back stress has also been reduced.

"Not long after the bulk dispensers were put into operation," Yates said,
"my annual insurance inspection was made, and the insurance inspector noted
in his report that our probability of back injuries was drastically reduced by eliminating
the lifting of 50 and 100 pound bags of ingredients used in our batching process."

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