Among US food plants, new constructions often take all the credit for having the most advanced operations. They have the greenfield sites, robots on day one, and a clean slate to work from.
But many companies are working with buildings and equipment that are decades old. So we compiled a list of 10 American food plants, half of which have operated since before 1990, that boosted their efficiency through a technology investment.
If you’re looking to upgrade your own plant, here are four key areas that pay off:
- Start with the utilities: Across the industry, the efficiency conversation tends to start at throughput, which leaves out a large part of the plant. All 10 plants in our report found their savings in compressed air, refrigeration, water, lighting, or the instruments watching those systems.
- Check the setting before you buy new equipment: Reviewing when compressed air, refrigeration, and process water setpoints were last updated offers a quick, low-cost diagnostic. In most of the projects we covered, the equipment was working correctly, but the target setpoints were never adjusted for current production.
- Visibility pays: You can’t fix problems you don’t know exist. Three machine vision cameras on one packaging line cost $18,000 and recovered $167,000 a year in wasted film, with payback in under a month. At another plant, sharper utility targets identified a single steam cooker running at a rate equal to nearly $200,000 a year.
- Count both utilities in the business case: Your project may result in utility savings beyond what you planned for. Among the plants we looked at, one removed a cooling tower and saved roughly 500,000 gallons of water. And a water project returned 25,000 MMBtus of energy.
See the full report to explore all 10 investments and their returns.
