Food safety specialist Fortress Technology is assisting select Mennel Milling plants in the US to protect product quality, as well as safeguard its people, processes and productivity. With both teams always committing to bring their best, a quality control investment has helped the fifth-generation family milling firm to continually improve its efforts to assure the quality of its products.
Colleagues at Mennel’s Newton, North Carolina, and Fostoria, Ohio plants explain why they are supportive of the Fortress Raptor Combination system and Contact 4.0 data software package and highlight how they are benefiting from Mennel’s equipment investments.
Headquartered in Fostoria Ohio, The Mennel Milling Company has been on a strategic expansion mission. For over 138 years, the family-owned firm, currently the seventh largest flour milling company in the US, has traditionally produced and distributed its products in bulk quantities via rail car, semi-truck trailer, 2,000-lb super sacks and 50-lb bags. However, with the addition of smaller, retail bag pack systems to address consumer demand during and after the pandemic, coupled with assuming full ownership of bakery mix and milling company Renwood Mills in 2022, Mennel has prioritized the efficiency and performance of its quality control inspection and checkweighing solutions.
Always seeking to drive operational excellence and standardize equipment, Senior Corporate Packaging Engineer Dieter Flick is part of the Mennel team who has been charged with this effort. Utilizing decades of experience, Dieter is responsible for maintaining and upgrading existing equipment, to enhance personnel safety and boost production efficiency.
Similarly, Johnathan Mace, Project Engineer at Mennel Milling and Bakery Mix – Newton, NC, has also been an integral part of installing new inspection equipment at his location.
The plastic cover positioned over the HMI panel is another useful feature that helps to prevent damage to the screen at the Mennel Milling and Bakery Mix plant in Newton, NC.Fortress Technology
Less Downtime at Bakery Mix Plant
Since installing its first Raptor Combination metal detector and checkweighing system on the Newton packing line in 2023, Jonathan reports that they have incurred no unplanned downtime on the new equipment so far. Jonathan cites simplicity, robustness and reliability as some of the biggest benefits of these machines.
The production, packaging, and inspection of approximately 750,000 lb. of flour each day for private label retail products, food service mixes, and wholesale bulk flour, requires durable and reliable machinery states Jonathan. “In a milling and packaging environment, screens can be easily damaged, and clearances can be extremely tight. Sometimes the products themselves contain salt and phosphate which can be corrosive. The Raptor’s Stainless-Steel construction has held up so far in these challenging environments.”
To optimize performance and ensure the flour doesn’t accumulate and affect the weight readings, plant technicians regularly clean the Raptor Combination units during each shift.
Another useful design feature is the plastic cover over the HMI panel, highlights Jonathan. “This is a great addition as it helps to prevent damage to the screen. This plastic cover helps prevent loose flour circulating in the environment from settling onto the conveyor, building up and negatively impacting weighing accuracy.”
Several customizations were made to the equipment supplied to the Mennel Newton plant. For example, the metal detection aperture on the second Raptor machine installed at Newton is an inch higher than standard. This was required to accommodate the different product formats and pack sizes that come off the existing vertical form, fill and seal pouch packing system.
Additionally, as a seven-story milling plant with a variety of moving machinery operating around the clock, vibration can affect the performance and signals of sensitive metal detectors and checkweighers, notes the Project Engineer. Fortress machines offer a couple of clever solutions that suppress this noise interference, ensuring that metal detector performance is not affected, reports Fortress spokesperson Ken Atkinson.
With a total of nine current packing lines and growing at the North Carolina plant, Jonathan says that there is an opportunity for more potential improvements to their lines in the future.
Supporting Digital Capabilities
Tethering multiple front-end production machines to back-end reporting software in real time has been hailed as the next step in smart manufacturing. Using an Ethernet connection, Contact 4.0 enables Mennel to review and collect data, as well as securely oversee the performance of an unlimited number of Fortress machines connected to the same network.
This has proven helpful to the team’s effort of making informed, well-timed production and brand assurance decisions, as well as maintenance schedules, notes Dieter. “Every morning, the production manager, the maintenance manager and I receive a report automatically generated by Contact 4.0 to assist in our decision making. Contact 4.0 clearly displays both the checkweigher’s histogram of batch weight distribution and bag data points to issue concerns over rejects, calculating the amount of product giveaway. These tools help us define problems with our filling system upstream.”
Fortress’s Contact 4.0 digital tool is currently being utilized in Mennel’s Fostoria, Ohio factory on both their checkweighing and metal detection systems.
The Fortress Raptor Combi system installed at the Newton plant features a plastic cover to help prevent loose flour circulating in the environment from settling onto the conveyor, building up, and negatively impacting weighing accuracy.Fortress Technology
Revolutionizing Productivity
To achieve ambitious growth targets and meet stricter standards, today’s modern manufacturers face higher demands for faster, more productive and energy-efficient processes.
“The reliability of these machines and technologies and their ease-of-use, especially when calibrating and testing the inspection equipment, has proven very important to our QA department. More importantly, our customers are specifying higher standards for metal detection to avoid any product contamination,” adds Dieter.
Facilitating scalable and seamless communication in all cyber-physical interactions is imperative to adopt a smart manufacturing approach. When digital transformations are scaled across the entire value chain, the gains can fundamentally transform a food manufacturer’s competitive position, accelerating decision-making and unlocking productivity gains.
Highlighting the benefits of implementing a fully-networked, standardized equipment and technology plan, Dieter concludes: “A high-quality product combined with excellent service has always been the key to any successful operation.”
