Smarter processing
As consumers continue to demand more consistency, higher quality, increased safety, more options and more convenience, some folks are demanding more from their processing – and getting it through technology. Ed Rodden’s advantage is that he has a new plant with the latest technology designed in, the flexibility to add more capability as it comes on line and past experience with manufacturing to tight specs and smaller tolerances.
SugarCreek’s new Indiana facility has not only allowed the company to do better at what it has always done, it is leading them into new ventures. SugarCreek has always been an independent custom processor, co-packing for national brands and providing private label products to specifications. Without the pressures of developing its own brands, the company could concentrate on providing just what the customer company wanted. Starting in 1966, with a plant in Washington Court House, Ohio, SugarCreek carved out a position specializing in bacon processing.
As bacon achieved its present fashionable status, SugarCreek added two plants in Cincinnati, one in Dayton and one in Kansas. Along the way, it developed an off-site lab, staffed with 10 food safety specialists and quality control experts, monitoring a stream of pathogen tests, temperature, fat and moisture readings. SugarCreek had become the nation’s largest independent bacon processor, with an impressive leadership team under second- generation owner, John Richardson.
In 2015, SugarCreek made a big move – a $130 million, 418,000-sq.-ft. plant in Cambridge City, Indiana, that utilized everything the company had learned about food processing, all the new proven technology they could build in and plans to add even more technological capabilities. This plant is designed to take SugarCreek “beyond bacon,” so to speak, to processing and cooking all types and species of protein plus other foods.
Sous vide solutions
While the plant does have conventionallcooking capabilties, Chief Information Officer (CIO) Rodden is most excited about a newer process SugarCreek has perfected. While not everything can be automated, SugarCreek has found ways to highly automate the “sous vide” process and adapt it to many different food products. Developed by French chefs, the food item is vacuum sealed in film and lowered into hot water – 132? to 140? F, depending on product type – a lower temperature, slower-cooking approach to perfectly cooked food. Temperature controlled to within 0.10 degrees eliminates overcooking. And because nothing or no one touches the food once it goes in the bag, several potential sources of contamination are eliminated. They are processing everything from beef to poultry to fish and seafood in commercial quantities this way.
Cooking in a sealed film results in a high quality product, retaining moisture and enhancing flavor, tenderness and texture. However, the largest benefit to sous vide cooking is the consistency it offers.
The interesting thing for SugarCreek is that technology and automation allow them to process in large quantities, but also because of the precision control and monitoring, to profitably process small quantities for either smaller customers or for shorter runs of a larger array of variations of products for big brands. SugarCreek sees the industry moving from large product runs to smaller, shorter runs of more specialized products and ready-to-eat items.
As for the big runs, the Indiana plant has 10 sous vide cooking tanks, served by an automated gantry system to load and unload the whole array, if necessary. At 8,000 to 10,000 lbs. per tank, that’s 80,000 to 100,000 lbs. of food at one run.
The sous vide process opens up all kinds of possibilities, so SugarCreek has assembled a team of corporate chefs to explore new products and recipes their customers could use, the kind of advances SugarCreek is calling “Brandworthy Food Solutions.” To demonstrate the difference in quality sous vide offers, SugarCreek’s Culinary and R&D teams will co-develop recipes with customers using their in-house test kitchen. Dishes are then presented to customers for tasting and commercialization planning.
Another advantage to the sous vide method includes “cleaner” labels. Sous vide requires fewer or no preservatives, resulting in a fresher, high quality product.
Rodden mentioned other changes that his company and the sous vide approach could help his customers adapt to. The big brand name food companies are finding brand names are not as important as they used to be. Now, they need to satisfy changing tastes more quickly. Rodden sees SugarCreek as positioned to be part of his customer’s product development teams.
These changes contributed to SugarCreek’s owner going out on a limb and investing a lot of money into their new plant. The flexible but food safety-conscious design allows raw prep separation, separation by species and three cooking halls for different cooking processes.
Production partners
Technology giant Cisco has been a partner from the beginning. The two companies spent a year in discovery and design, making sure the technology was both functional and accessible to workers in the plant but remotely and securely accessible to staff in other SugarCreek plants or equipment vendors’ engineers for troubleshooting purposes. Collaboration is an integral design principle. A large wireless infrastructure was built into the plant for both voice and data communication, especially as the data volume from scanners alone would be huge.
There are also 50- and 75-in. television monitors mounted in stainless steel enclosures to feed information back to workers on the floor in real time during processing, instead of waiting until the end of the shift. There is also an instant messaging system to allow workers to get video to iPads or iPhones. Engineers can monitor equipment, get help from other plants and actually show team members or equipment vendors what is happening on the floor.
SugarCreek also partners with VMWare, and is in the process of refreshing their data centers using VMWare NSX which will enhance data security.
Rodden’s background includes working with injection molding, an industry well advanced in process control. The food industry is not as progressive, especially in meat processing, but SugarCreek is aiming to advance that.
For example, the company processes a lot of pork bellies. In two plants, the curing process can take up to half of the plant. Bellies come in raw, are injected and then a “comb” hooks into the belly, with the combs then hooking into a “tree,” 24 combs to a tree. Some 700 to 1,000 trees may be hooked into an overhead rail system at a time.
Some time ago, they put an RFID tag on each tree and integrated the tags with their inventory system. The trees are scanned, compared to orders, lots assembled and weights monitored through scales integrated into the system. Every 10 trees, core samples are taken for temperature and other curing markers. The bellies are monitored all the way through from one process to another, with weights and shrink tallied.
In the Indiana plant, the implementation of the next stage is beginning – Real Time Location Service (RTLS), in which an active RFID tag is embedded in each worker’s ID tag, in large part to increase worker safety.
They have 88,000 lbs. of ammonia on site, Rodden explained. If there is a release, their system will know where every employee is in the plant, the local emergency responders will be tied into the system so they also know if someone is still in the plant and needs evacuation or rescue. Even the emergency responders themselves will be tied into the system, so that the chief knows where his people are in the plant.
The system will also be used for area safety, preventing operation if someone is in an area they should not be in while a process is running.
The RTLS system will also be designed so that workers in a raw section would be denied access to a cooked section to avoid accidental cross contamination. The system will also automatically record how much labor time is spent in certain areas of the plant, to aid process adjustment or redesign.
They are also beginning the implementation of video analytics using 250 HD video cameras, some connected with specialized analytic software. With this, cameras will scan for foreign objects in food material. Others will make sure cutting blades or grinders will not operate if a human hand is in a vulnerable location. This kind of technology can be deployed where fixed guards are hard to install.
It’s not surprising that Rodden said analyzing all the data they are collecting is the most difficult part of what they’re doing, given the volume and the different types of information. Sifting through the data to find out what is the most useful is a challenge.
“We think we’re pioneers on some of this,” Rodden says. Their curing process data collection system, for example, is a real advance from a small company.
“We’re trying to be leading edge without being bleeding edge,” he says. Moisture, room temperatures and humidity and refrigeration are all networked and recorded. Most customers check temperatures going into trucks and upon arrival. SugarCreek uses systems, in cooperation with some customers, that will tell them what happened in transit, for example, if a trucker left his reefer system off awhile.
SugarCreek’s system for scanning every incoming belly and long-term analysis determines how each belly can best be used, especially for the pre-cooked bacon products.
The company applies the same process control principles to producing meatballs, sausage patties, cooked sausage products and steaks for foodservice. They are also producing snack kits, sandwich spirals and seasonal party trays, while developing more expertise in starches and vegetables.
Rodden reflected a bit on younger generations, their lack of historical reference about why the food industry uses these tools to preserve food, prevent spoilage and lessen the risk of foodborne illness.
“I tend to point out to these folks that a large number of food safety issues have come from organic and clean label products,” he says. “Too often a ‘kill step’ is left out in those foods. With sous vide, the product is never handled after the kill step. No one touches it and the result is a safer, ‘cleaner’ product.”