Improving Operational Efficiency for Frozen RTE Meal Processing

Frozen ready-to-eat meals have become a staple in any well-stocked kitchen. The convenience it offers modern consumers cannot be overemphasized. Consistently rising demand means that some of today’s most recognizable chefs and brands like Marie Callender’s, Stouffer’s, Chef Boyardee and Lean Cuisine offer a variety of frozen ready-to-eat meals.

More and more, consumers want easy-to-heat or easy-to-cook options that are healthy, delicious, and ready to consume in just a few minutes. For manufacturers of frozen ready meals, portioning the correct amount of cooked ingredients into each tray before moving to the freezing stage will have a major influence on the factory’s overall operational efficiency. 

Adding too many ingredients means you are giving away product, while not portioning to the required amount could lead to quality concerns and brand reputation issues. Improving the accuracy and speed of each weighing transaction during the portioning step will help you to increase operational efficiency, maximize yield, and limit unacceptable losses in the facility. Here’s how MARCO’s takeaway scales and smart weighing solutions can assist.  

Quick Ways to Improve Operational Efficiency in Frozen Food Processing Operations

At its core, efficiency is the measurement of useful work performed over time from resources deployed to achieve a goal or target. In frozen food processing, this includes every minute from taking in raw material yield to dispatching products. Intake, storage, preparation, transformation, portioning, packing, sealing, labeling, and palletizing are the primary stages involved in most frozen food production operations. 

How frozen food processors measure, control and improve each of these stages determines where they can unlock additional efficiencies. Here are some quick ways to establish control, measure performance, and adjust strategies for increased throughput, reduced downtime, and improved quality in frozen food processing operations. 

Utilize Labor Effectively 

The cold supply chain has to run fast. From when the food is cooked, portioned, and frozen, accurately measuring each weight taken from the total mass volume of yield being processed may require expensive labor-intensive operations. One example is adding fillings for products like pies or lasagnas. Each product may end up varying in weight slightly due to inconsistent portioning where underpacking or overpacking is all too common. If you aren’t using smart scales that weigh, calculate, and indicate how much of the raw material to takeaway from a batch to reach the specified target weight, you are giving away product, increasing waste, and reducing productive time while workers have to make decisions that affect your bottom line. 

MARCO’s takeaway scales use a highly effective, simple to follow red ‘no’, green ‘go’ indicator for fast, accurate portioning that is proven to increase packing speed and accuracy. The scales measure the weight removed from a bulk container and indicate a green ‘go’ light when the taken weight meets the required portion specification. Greater accuracy, faster processing, and reduced waste ensures you can increase operational efficiency and utilize your labor force more effectively.

Gather Data About Each Weighing Transaction

From intake through to dispatch, weighing transactions are some of the key benchmarks you use to measure efficiency. Gathering this data allows you to analyze performance, identify bottlenecks, and determine where excessive giveaway is eating into your profits. 

MARCO’s scales connect and integrate with application-specific software modules that gather essential process data and provide real-time analytics for each batch processed. 

The Goods Received Module (GRM) allows greater visibility and management of raw material intake while the Yield Control Module (YCM) provides complete traceability through all production stages. You can also deploy solutions that exchange data gathered from your production floor with your ERP systems like SAP, SAGE, or Oracle. Using this information, you can identify your performance parameters, set realistic baselines, and monitor each shift to establish where productivity gaps exist. 

Delivering Performance Improvements Across the Cold Supply Chain with MARCO

MARCO helps manufacturers establish new methods of control for labor-intensive operations and maximize processing efficiency across the cold supply chain. With our solutions, you can quickly enforce controls, measure real-time performance, and eliminate wasteful processes from your frozen ready meal processing operations. To find out more, you can read this eBook covering all of MARCO’s hardware and software solutions that can help you address any inefficiencies in your processing facilities. 

If you’re ready to talk about how to improve your operational efficiency in frozen food processing quickly, get in touch with MARCO today.