» COOKING WITH THE DATA
what are the upper and lower size
limits of the product? What is the
batter viscosity?
Manpower. And ;nally, manpower
documents the positions and responsibilities of each operator on the line.
Create a log to document
CCP settings
Once all these CCPs are identi;ed,
create a log to document the setting for
each of the CCPs for every SKU and
document every change made during
the production run. The data collected
will change the cooking process from
an art to a science.
Data can be entered into simple
spreadsheets or even databases allow-
ing you to analyze it and create a “Best
Practices Log” for each SKU. History
will show, most likely, regardless of
how well a product is run on one shift,
when the next shift comes in, they will
“dial in” the process to the settings they
‘feel’ are best. You will also ;nd there
is a high correlation between a success-
in a usable format unless the culture
of the organization is one that uses
data-driven facts to drive the decision
making process.
Yield will be higher when oven exit temperatures are nearer the HACCP minimum.
✔ What are the temperature settings
on the sealer bars of the form-;ll-and-seal machine?
Measurements. This is also where
you document all the measurements
for each of these pieces of equipment,
whether it is the RPMs of the belts, the
dwell time of the oven or fryer, or the
bags per minute on the pack-out line.
Methods would include processes
such as the rate at which material gets
dumped onto the belt or what the process is for checking batter viscosity.
ful run (higher yield and productivity)
and a controlled process. Now you have
the data that will tell you the results
of the decisions made throughout the
process of running any given SKU.
What to do with all this
science?
All this data is completely unnecessary unless it is going to be used by
management to make decisions. There
is no reason to go through the effort
of collecting, collating and putting it
Let data drive the process
Data can and should be the driver
behind any changes in the process.
When operators are given the authority to change any input variable based
on “this is the way we run it” rather
than this is the way the data tells us
to run it, large variation in the process
will occur.
Without getting into all the statistical jargon, think of it like this. Every
time a change is made in a process, it
creates some variation. This variance
becomes the starting point for the variance in the following process.
For example, speeding up the belt
speed at the front end of the process,
thinning the batter viscosity in the middle of the process and slowing the dwell
time on the fryer each on its own creates variance, but each variance adds
to the next and accumulates as product
progresses through the process.
It’s called covariance, but what
really matters is recognizing these
variances are cumulative throughout
the process. This is why it is important
to document each of the points in the
