6 Benefits of Using a Conveyor System for Food Processing!

Conveyor system

There are many aspects encompassing food processing, from mixing ingredients to packaging to quality control. All these are quite involving and you might require a bigger workforce to enable this, especially if you’re looking to expand your operations. A food conveyor system will come in handy with this expansion.

This system focuses on transporting goods from one point to another, including from floor to floor. Adopting such a system can prove to be beneficial for your food processing. Wondering how?

This article will highlight some of the advantages of adopting a conveyor system in your operations. Read on!

1. Increased Productivity

A conveyor system will execute your food processing activities at a much faster rate compared to when you use human labor. For more information on its working systems, check this out. Faster work execution means that more will be done within a short period, increasing your company’s productivity levels. This often translates to increased returns, which is every business’s desire.

Without a conveyor system, your team will be the one in charge of these processes. This means that the top leadership has to supervise the execution of operations to ensure they’re done in the right way and there are no redundancies. The supervision will lead to low productivity levels for the top management.

However, with a conveyor system, they can focus on other core managerial operations that’ll lead to profit realization. This increases productivity levels not only for your top management but also for your business.

2. Reduced Costs

You have to invest in many workers when running your food processing operations without a conveyor system. Since production will often be done 24 hours to meet market demand, you have to double your team, one for the day and the other for the night shift. This means that you’ll incur many costs to cater to them, from wages to insurance covers to other benefits.

However, with the conveyor system, you don’t need many workers. You might only need one or two to be on the ground. They’ll supervise the process to ensure that everything is running smoothly. With a reduced number of workers, your operating costs are also reduced.

You’ll spend less money on salaries and benefits, availing more money in your business that you can invest in other core activities for growth.

3. Better Compliance

When it comes to food production, there are various standards to be met to ensure that the final product is fit for human consumption. This means that you need to maintain high levels of hygiene in your production.

When using human labor, it might be challenging to maintain these standards since one might compromise something, with or without their knowledge. A small mishap in following quality protocols may render a whole batch unfit for human consumption.

Utilizing a conveyor system changes the narrative. There are conveyor systems meant for food production needs, which are often sterile and have anti-bacterial properties. This means that your food will always meet the minimum quality standards, which will be maintained throughout the process. All you need to do is clean the conveyor belts regularly using the required products to maintain their sterile properties.

4. Better Production Control

A conveyor system gives you the flexibility of adjusting its production speed to meet your needs. You can easily increase production speed when there’s a deficiency for you to meet your customers’ needs without compromising on quality. You’re in control of your production process.

The same can’t be said when utilizing human labor. Your production speed is dependent on them. If they’re tired or have no morale, it’ll affect their performance levels. With them, when you try to speed things up, there’s a high possibility of errors being made in the process, reducing quality. They’re more or less in control of your production rates.

5. Fewer Errors

When human labor is used to execute any task, there’s always a high probability of errors. This is often attributed to fatigue, ignorance, or lack of know-how. 

Errors in food production mean a high probability of quality being compromised or disruption of systems. How? A worker may place a given ingredient in the wrong chamber or use the wrong quantity that’s needed. If this is noted early, you can repeat the production process to rectify the situation. On the other hand, if it’s not noticed, what does that say about the quality of the final product?

However, when you use a conveyor system, everything will be done as expected; there’ll be no deviation in the procedure. This means that quality is maintained all through, increasing the chances of your business fully satisfying your clients’ needs. All you need to do to ensure this is to program it properly without errors.  

6. Increased Safety

Without utilizing a conveyor system, your workers will be doing all the heavy lifting, at times from floor to floor. This can lead to injuries and accidents as they do this, reducing their safety. Also, you’d need to have several workers working on a given task.

Where many people are working together, accidents are prone to happen. This is because workers are very different; some may be careless while others may not have the morale to work. These are the ingredients of accidents.

A conveyor system eliminates all probabilities of injuries. They’ll ferry goods from one floor to another, eliminating the need for your workers to do so. There’ll also be minimal workers working together, reducing the probability of accidents, increasing safety.

Therefore, there’ll be no redundancy attributed to workers taking sick leaves to cater to their injuries, which could’ve been avoided with the right systems in place.

Conclusion 

Food processing can be quite an involving task, hence the need to invest in a conveyor system for your business. With a conveyor system, you’ll stand to benefit from the ways given in this article.

If you’re expanding your operations, investing in a conveyor system is the way to go. The main factor to consider as you make this investment is the size of your production plant, and of course, your budget.

Conveyor system article and permission to publish here provided by Claire Glassman. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on February 24, 2022.