How to Increase Yields in Food Production with Blending Optimization

Pursuing Food Manufacturing Excellence While Reducing Cost and Waste Through Innovation

With rising inflation and consumer spending power shrinking, it is becoming more important for companies in the food industry to deliver the latest products to market in cost effective ways. Profit margins are already small and volatility in supply make sustainable business difficult to achieve.

Unlike discrete industries, food production allows for some variation in the manufacturing process, particularly in blending of ingredients to create the final product. This provides an area for optimizing costs, sourcing and ingredient mixes but the same flexibility presents a challenge in terms of complexity of determining the optimal recipe and method.

For example, even with simple recipes that include limited ingredients, planners would need to model and evaluate millions of potential combinations of ingredient amounts, costs and supply sources. This means traditional planning methods (i.e. spreadsheets) are simply not effective.

Digital planning solutions can help manufacturers address these challenges and enable new levels of decision support to test blends and recipes in the virtual world without risk and cost. Planners can apply these solutions to a diverse array of consumer food products:

• Processed Meats, Dairy Products, Beverages, Baked Goods, Breakfast Cereals, Packaged Snacks, Instant Foods, etc.

Decisions that previously might have taken days of experimentation (or even been unobtainable) can now be made in minutes using the power of optimization. The ability to consider multiple variables and constraints related to raw materials, inventory levels, suppliers, production quantities and costs is all in a day’s work for optimization engines. Combined with the planner’s guidance of goals and objectives, the human/technology combination delivers a fundamental change in the ability to operate more effectively on multiple levels:

• Creating more accurate forecasts on raw material pricing for improved sourcing decisions
• Accelerating decision-making that considers all business rules, regulations and constraints
• Identifying opportunities for significant savings by choosing the best blend
• And (of course) creating great tasting food for the consumer!

While disruption will continue to have significant impact on the global food manufacturing industry, agile companies equipped with the correct planning tools and processes can not only adapt to disruption but also improve their supply chain and operational efficiency.

DELMIA Quintiq has the technology and capabilities to help food manufacturers realize their vision of digital transformation to drive excellence in production operations. With shorter planning times, planners gain more agility to react to changes in supply and demand. This leads to streamlined operations and the ability to reduce inventory and cost while still maintaining high levels of order fulfillment and customer service. There is also the advantage of reducing food wastage and the associated benefits of achieving sustainability goals.

In partnership with The Logic Factory, DELMIA solutions are enabling blending optimization and other advanced planning and supply chain solutions to global brands in the food and beverage industry.

Learn about the details behind Blending Optimization downloading our eBook, Master Recipe and Blending Optimization in Food Manufacturing.