Product category:
Food and drink manufacturing: processing equipment
News Release from: Kluber Lubrication GB | Subject: Lubrication support service
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 11 September 2006
Lubrication support tailored for food
manufacture
Increased output and product integrity at less cost are the benefits from using a complete lubrication and service support package for customers in the food and beverage industry.
Today in the food manufacturing market place there are ever increasing demands relating to productivity improvements, operational cost reduction, increased product integrity and compliance with current legislation Lubrication is a factor with impact on product integrity as well as on operating costs and productivity
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 2 May 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Water-miscible bonded coatings are eco-friendly
Kluber Lubrication has developed water-miscible bonded coatings which combine economical wear protection and high component performance with eco-friendliness.
Speciality forming lubricants need no cleaning
Speciality metal forming lubricants, which do not need a cleaning process, play a major roll in the rolling and deep drawing of aluminium foils for food packaging.
With Klass the global player Kluber Lubrication offers a complete lubrication and service support package for customers in the food and beverage industry.
The demonstration that this package works, was delivered for example in a bottling plant: the company confirmed, Klass contributed 50% to the achievement of their objectives relative to increasing output to a level of plus 30%, which meant 13056 cases more per day.
* Market changes and challenges - during the last 10 years there have been significant changes in the market place with food and beverage manufacturers facing ever increasing challenges when considering the following.
Further reading
Food processing efficiency with lubricants
12 months ago a call for help was received from a major blue chip food processing company with the task of reducing costs without compromising efficiencies.
Grease adds to product quality
A switch manufacturer applies a film of Kluber Isoflex Topas NB 52 grease to the surface of each component, lubricating contact points evenly, allowing 36,000 components to be treated simultaneously.
Chain lubricant and service saves downtime
A UK site of a major global confectionery manufacturer saved over GBP 48,000 in one outage in parts alone and helped increase throughput by eliminating lubrication- attributable downtime.
Legislation.
Securing, keeping and developing the right personnel.
Brand protection.
Customer audits e g, by major supermarket groups.
Acceptable profit margins in an environment of ever increasing costs.
Continuous improvement.
* Legislation - due to increased monitoring and therefore awareness of food contamination risks, legislative bodies have implemented more procedures to increase levels of consistency and food safety.
One such recent example is the relatively new ISO Standard 22000 covering food safety management systems which is applicable to any organisation in the food chain.
Some of the issues facing food manufacturing plants today are personnel training, audits, PRPs (Prerequisite Programmes) or Good Maintenance Practice (GMP).
With regards to these issues, Klass helps support food manufacturing plants in satisfying legal compliance through identifying in HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) Lubrication Audits all lubrication Critical Control Points (CCPs) and through lubrication training workshops.
* Personnel - in the late 90s it became very apparent that major international food manufacturers were seeking to utilise personnel better involved in the production process.
Often these personnel, production operators, would stand supervising the machines used in production when they were running and only called into direct action when for some reason there was a halt in the production process due to for example a blockage on the production line.
Therefore to utilise personnel better, promote and increase more ownership of the machines by the operator and job satisfaction, new tasks were required.
Tasks were identified such as basic lubricating tasks on the machines.
However very quickly it was identified by those manufacturing plants that the production operators would need to be trained to allow them to feel comfortable and be able to safely complete the additional tasks.
Klass provides the training to allow the levels of knowledge and skill be increased and thus allow new tasks to be completed efficiently.
The other positive aspect to this introduction of the new tasks for the operators was it freed up the 'overworked' line engineers to concentrate on the more major engineering work to be completed on the production line.
Under the old lubrication regime the engineer would often complete all the lubrication tasks during a weekend resulting in increased amount of overtime worked leading to increasing production costs and budgets being overspent.
Therefore Klass through training improves utilisation of labour, increasing the level of job satisfaction through increasing levels of knowledge and skills.
The net result is greater efficiency at reduced cost through better trained personnel.
* Brand protection - brand quality is built up over many years.
The brand is only as good as the people who are working to produce the brand.
In this connection, it is important for the people given the responsibility to lubricate, to choose the right lubricant, the right quantity and interval to prevent product contamination.
By the implementation of new procedures, schedules and best practice, increased levels of brand protection can be achieved.
"Klass is a package that is people oriented, supporting protection of the Brand.
At Kluber Lubrication we have considerable knowledge and experience built up over 75 years in relation to lubricant design and application.
We see it as crucial that we share this knowledge and experience through Lubricant Workshops in order to ensure that we support risk reduction," explained David Laing, industry group manager food processing industry at Kluber Lubrication Muenchen, Germany.
* Customer audits - due to legislation and protection of brand image food producers own customers e.g the major supermarket groups conduct an increasing number of audits with the food producer.
These audits allow the supermarket demonstrate due diligence in ensuring they protect the end customer, the ultimate consumer of the food product.
"These audits we have seen on occasions requested by the supermarket groups with little notification.
Through Klass we have been able within one week to conduct a complete site HACCP lubrication audit for the food producer.
The Kluber Lubrication HACCP Lubrication Audit and the resulting data collected assist the production of the lubrication schedules, whilst Kluber Lubrication also supports their implementation on site prior to the audit from the supermarket," David Laing confirmed.
* Acceptable profit margins - from the market internationally, due to low inflation rates, there is a greater difficulty in achieving price rises of the finished goods to allow for growth in profitability.
Production costs increase with increasing demands to implement new procedures to comply with legislation and also by the increasing cost of some basic commodities above inflation rates, e g, steel and energy prices.
Thus, companies have seen a reduction in profitability.
The possibilities to counteract increasing costs and reduced profitability are for example better utilisation of labour, reduced down time of production lines through identifying areas where improvements can be made in Best Practice.
David Laing: "Referring to the earlier example, where production output was increased by 30%, Klass has proven successful in this field of increasing profitability through implementing 'best practice'." * In-House, continuous improvement programmes (CIPs) - Klass due to it being a support package setting out clearly defined annual improvement projects creates and supports a culture of continuous improvement.
Annually project improvements jointly are clearly defined between the responsible KLASS Manager from Kluber and the Klass 'driver' from the respective food manufacturing plant.
During the year at agreed time intervals these projects are reviewed jointly to allow monitoring of actual progress to completion with any additional activities agreed to allow maximum success of CIPs.
* General trends - one further observation in the market is that food and beverage producing plants in order to achieve a reduction in costs and increase profitability typically reduce the head count, number of employees on site.
This creates greater challenges when considering how to comply with the greater workload placed by legislative bodies and customers with fewer personnel on site.
The supply of labour from the Kluber Lubrication Technical Services is the support offered in the frame of Klass to ensure customers' goals and objectives are met in the desired timescales.
"Often on listening we heard these words 'We know what we have to do but we do not have the time or the knowledge to allow us to reach our goal.
This confirmed very clearly that the market required lubricant manufacturers who are not only committed to supplying lubricants but personnel, knowledge and skills," told Laing.
* To summarise Klass - the lubricants and service package Klass, has been designed to meet the needs of the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries; it includes the following key features.
Product integrity.
Comprehensive range of NSF H1 special lubricants.
Consulting on lubricant applications.
Monitoring, inspection of friction points by service engineers.
Tribological analyses.
Best practice: storage, documentation.
Support in HACCP analyses.
Tailor-made training programmes and on-site seminars.
Legislative compliance.
Food safety management systems.
Increased reliability.
Reduced downtime.
Operational cost reduction.
Energy reduction.
The 13000 cases per day more production as referred to earlier resulted from implementing a number of Klass ingredients, as follows.
Lubrication schedules ensuring identification of all lubrication points on the line.
NSF H1 lubricants.
Labelling management system ensuring the operator could easily identify the correct lubricant in each lubricant point.
Lubrication Ttaining workshops to increase the awareness of the importance of correct lubrication.
Interim audits to check lubrication tasks were being executed correctly.
Lubrication asset stations, bringing the lubricants close to the lubrication points to make lubrication easier.
Laing summarized: "It is vital that Klass is never perceived to be a finished product at Kluber Lubrication as we continue to develop Klass to meet the challenges faced by the food manufacturers of tomorrow.
Klass is presented in a package that is user friendly and allows Kluber to fulfill the specific demands of individual production sites in selecting the appropriate lubricants and support. Request a free brochure from Kluber Lubrication GB ...
These are the basic ingredients needed to allow our customers to meet their short and long term goals and objectives.".
• Kluber Lubrication GB: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Manufacturingtalk email newsletter
• Manufacturingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
