Reinventing process systems to accommodate recipe changes in food and beverage manufacturing is a complex but essential task to maintain product quality, compliance, and efficiency. While this could be driven by the availability of the ingredients or a regulatory change, some are driven by the evolving consumer preferences and shifting of the customer’s needs. Below we share our strategic approach in reinventing your process systems:
1. Analyze the Impact of Recipe Change
- Ingredient Profiles: Assess how new ingredients or altered proportions affect processing, such as mixing, heating, or cooling. Placer Process’ engineering team can help you design and upgrade your mixing, heating, and/cooling system, heat exchangers, piping, utility, and other associated processed to help your process change run smoothly.
- Process Sensitivities: Identify steps in the production process that are sensitive to changes (e.g., viscosity, pH, temperature requirements).
- Regulatory Requirements: Ensure the new recipe complies with food safety and labeling regulations.
2. Reevaluate Production Equipment
- Capacity and Compatibility: Verify if existing equipment can handle the new recipe (e.g. mixing speeds, heat exchange rates, ingredient compatibility and physical properties).
- Automation Systems: Update automation software or programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to align with new parameters.
- Scaling Flexibility: Consider modular systems or retrofitting for scalability in case the recipe requires batch size adjustments. Placer Process’ team can help you maximize the use of the existing equipment and make necessary adjustments to achieve your new process requirements. On the other hand, our turn-key design-build process system teams are here for you! In the event that you need new process systems built with the full automation, sensors, and all the bell and whistles you can think of, we can work with your project specifications and perform all of the design, system fabrication, automation, installation, and start-up of the equipment at the project site. As general engineering contractor, we bring years of expertise in collaborating with research teams to reinvent processes and integrate the ideal equipment – be it blending systems, pasteurizers, filtration units, ingredient storage systems, or more – to precisely meet our customers’ unique needs.
3. Assess for Process Design Modifications
- Rethink Critical Points: Modify processing steps to accommodate new ingredient characteristics, such as blending, filtration, or pasteurization. Adding additional intermediary processes to meet the desired quality of the new product line is essential at Placer Process. We have years in
- Optimize Energy Use: Implement energy-efficient systems tailored to the revised thermal or mechanical demands of the recipe.
- Cleaning and Sanitation Adapt CIP (Clean-In-Place) protocols to ensure compatibility with new ingredients or residues. Our teams at Placer Process are trained to rapidly built a new CIP system or audit your existing CIP system and come up with ideas to improve your CIP performance. We believe repeatable CIP system will help you reduce operating cost and increasing your throughput while maintaining your product quality and extending the shelf-life. We are proud of our high-quality local-built CIP systems.
4. Invest in Proof-Of-Concept Pilot-Scale System
- Pilot Testing: Conduct small-scale production runs to identify bottlenecks or quality issues. If you are ready to take your process to the next step, we can be your strategic partner. With our extensive experiences in the food, beverage, dairy, cheese, brewery, dairy, alternative foods, and biotechnology manufacturing environment, we specialize in designing state-of-the-art pilot testing skids. These systems combine our practical expertise in upscaling processes with your in-depth research and understanding of your product’s unique characteristics, ensuring a seamless transition from concept to production.
- Quality Assurance (QA): Update QA protocols to include tests for new ingredient or recipe-specific metrics.
- Shelf-Life Testing: Reassess storage stability, packaging compatibility, and product longevity.
5. Train Staff and Update Procedures
- Operator Training: Provide hands-on training for new equipment, processes, or automation workflows.
- Documentation Updates: Revise Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and maintenance schedules to reflect process changes.
- Cross-Functional Teams: Foster collaboration between R&D, engineering, and production teams to ensure seamless integration.
6. Sustainable Practices
- Waste Minimization: Design processes to reduce waste generation during testing and production.
- Ingredient Sourcing: Partner with suppliers to ensure sustainable and consistent quality of new ingredients.
- Energy Recovery: Leverage waste heat or process by-products to offset energy costs.
These strategic reinvention helps enhances product appeal, improves operational efficiency, and positions the manufacturer to respond flexibly to future recipe innovations. Having a reliable process contractor partner can play a vital role in by bringing technical expertise, operational efficiency, innovative solutions, implementation scheduling, and budget planning to make your project flourish to its full potential. Contact Placer Process today to take the next step in optimizing and reinventing your food and beverage manufacturing process. Let us help you achieve your goals with tailored solutions, expert guidance, and state-of-the-art equipment integration.
