Spray-dried

Base powder is not something that a company can develop solo, the demand of consumers provides that different nutritional and health benefits from the product. The marketing departments believe that a number of containers in constant change will win market share, and research and development are always developing new products. All these products consist of powder base mixed with various vitamins, additives, colorants and, later, probiotics.

Without taking into account the developments made in the extension of life useful of these products, if the manufacturing process is not flexible and agile, this will inevitably lead to the manufacture by stock, and is not manufactured to meet customer orders. The warehouse of finished products could contain vast holdings. It is not uncommon for businesses whose processes dictate the level of stocks, have several million euros in inventory, money that could be used better.

If the spray is the "plant oil", then the packaging is quite the opposite. Machines for packaging are the boat fast multidirectional, able to start and stop quickly, changing direction several times a day (even every hour) and they are always in a career with several packaging machines. What happens in the middle is the key to obtain several products on the market, without massive inventories.

· Spray-dried

· Formulation

· Mixed

· The quality assurance

· Packaging

· Cleaning

It must be careful in what part of the process the minority ingredients and microingredientes are added, this requires taking into account the potential damage that can occur if these important and sensitive ingredients are added prior to drying by spraying. There may be damage to the functionality of the vitamins, additives and especially by probiotics due to the heat, but the most important thing is that the spray are enormous deposits that require days to be able to clean them, so any change in the recipe (which must be a common methodology to avoid the accumulation of stocks) means great times of inactivity.

Recipe for micro and minority additions necessary to produce any variation in the base powder, now may be offline (offline). This can simply be done through manual development or, if the volumes are sufficient, is preferable to use the automatic formulation. These not mixed formulas are then-to perform automatic additions to the mix Foundation.

Minority formulations, and micro are always added in an IBC and that they are transportable and the premezclado can be carried out in the IBC. The benefit of mix in an IBC with a revolving agitator is the following IBC can hold a completely different formulation, therefore there is no static mixer to clean up. The variety can be added to this base without having to interrupt production.

This can be batch or continuous. According to the objectives of these tasks and due to the fact that the continuous mixing requires automation, for a continuous formulation, is wide information relating to the mixed batch.

· IBC - based dust and the formulation of minority revolving mixer and microphones are added to an IBC, and this is subsequently flipped to produce a final mix. Normally this can be achieved using the same rotating mixer used for the formulation of the premix.

· Static mixer - base powder and formulation can be transferred in a fixed static mixer. If you are using this type of mixer, the time of cleaning between different recipes should be considered, although now the number of batches per hour can be quite high.

With a rotating mixer, any cleaning among recipes is carried out 'off line'. Although the total number of batches that can be obtained is smaller, probably next 4 lots per hour, to a rotating mixer mixing time is greater than a static mixer.

Normally the quality assurance is carried out after the mix, but before packaging. This can lead to many work tasks that may involve a significant delay, up to 24 hours to ensure the quality. Working at 5 tons per hour, means that more than 100 tonnes are waiting to get the assurance of quality control to control the product and have it ready for packaging. The current alternative is to make the packaging at the same time that is controlled through the verification of the product quality. Traceability is essential to allow this to happen, however, this only means move 100 tonnes to the warehouse of finished products.

A well designed factory will make it possible to have a process that must be validated. Provided that the raw materials enter the process on an ongoing basis and within a margin of tolerance, it is not necessary to check the quality of the finished product. The exception to this are regular quality checks to ensure that validation is maintained. A sensitive compromise is based on the procedure of quality control in a scale, allowing the product being packaged and introduced in the logistics chain. In the case of any non-conformity of the product, it can be retrieved prior to it being on the platform, due to the traceability of the product.

Due to the constant changes in the sizes of container and the recipes of products, it is common to have several packaging machines. When the process includes a fixed static mixer, it is essential to separate the mixer of packaging machines to allow the flexibility of the production. If you use an IBC rotating mixer, the mixer is now offline and allow the transport of the product packaging machine, allowing rigid IBC be used for the mixture.

The IBC allow total flexibility with any of the processes of mixing. If the requirement of large quantities of product in a line of quality assurance has been removed, then the number of IBC is reduced.

It can be to produce lines of packaging with capabilities exceeding 15 tons per hour. These machines normally exceed the level of production of the dryer by spraying, therefore we we could ask if you could use 3 or 4 machines small and economic, giving greater flexibility to the production. The truth is that the 'read' not used only to use a single large packaging machine 4 hours and then have it be cleaned for 6 hours, but it would be more efficient to use 2 or 3 machines for 8 hours and then clean them 2 hours.

The use of IBC for the premezclado between the mixer and packaging machines eliminates the use of static pneumatic systems, which are difficult to clean. Cleaning the IBC 'off line' can be a continuous production. Traditionally, this has been done using water as a means of laundering, however, in the case of a conventional laundry takes a long time and drying cycle can be up to 40 minutes. The clean air of the IBC is now available, in this way can reduce the times of cleaning around 10 minutes, with the advantage that there are no effluent, only the dust in the air to treat. The number of IBC can be reduced substantially, since returned to the process in a matter of minutes.

If the 'Lean manufacturing' philosophy is used after the drying process by spraying, the use of an IBC system is of utmost importance to allow:

· Pre-mixed the minority and micros.

· Separate the mixer with the packaging chain.

· Traceability of lots

· Possibility of mixing the final product

There is no reason so that facilities can not make requests of the customer or achieve weekly and even daily forecasts. The finished products stored must be a thing of the past, as well as large quantities of products semi-terminados in a chain of processes.