PET Food Processing - September 2018 - 24

PLANT PROFILE

The Wenger X-185
extruder is located
in a separate
room below the
preconditioner and
the raw material
handling systems.

of diets and an immense number of separate SKUs requiring multiple changeovers means packaging is often
a bottleneck. "One of our facilities averages 60 distinct
formulas per month with an average of three SKUs per
formula for a total on average of 2,000 finished SKUs per
month across all of our plants," Friesel says.
Managing the just-in-time delivery of packaging
materials for thousands of SKUs requires a lot of coordination. "We produce too high of volume at any of
our locations for us to stock more than a few months of
packaging materials for any one production run," says
Tami Mars, customer support manager. "It would require much more storage space than we have. We try to
have all packaging materials at least seven days in advance. In order to do that, we have a very solid relationship with our suppliers and there is a lot of conversation
that goes back and forth every single day."
To maximize efficiency and accurately identify bottlenecks, C.J. Foods has adopted an interactive plant floor
productivity efficiency system. Redzone digital score
boards are located on every packaging line and available on company issued iPads. "Using everything that
we know about the product from custom benchmarks
we set, Redzone calculates the productivity based on
the optimal rate," says Bill Brock, vice president of operations. "We currently use this technology in the extrusion and packaging areas. Redzone helps us identify and
manage our bottlenecks. We set the targets and as we
get better we can stretch the targets and raise the bar to
keep pushing for more improvements. After implementing Redzone we did some work on line balancing and we
improved that line by 24% in actual output and it was
simply by going back and making sure we were doing
things to support the timing and we weren't overpowering or underpowering the line."
Information is the tool C.J. Foods employs to address
packaging speed and capacity challenges. "Redzone
supplies the operational metrics but there is also quality, service and cost metrics that I look at that are not in
Redzone," says Brian Lundquist, chief operating officer.

PET FOOD PROCESSING | September 2018 | www.petfoodprocessing.net

"I look at seven or eight metrics every single day. We
plot a course for the year then break it down into quarters, months, weeks and days. We focus a lot of time on
the areas that get off track and how to get that back on
track." This systematic approach to operational efficiency helps C.J. Foods grow capacity with existing systems
and meet customer needs now and in the future.
"As we've evolved, we have a much better understanding of the capacity we already have," Krehbiel
says. "Investment in equipment or more space is not
always what you need to have more capacity. We have
an amount of unrealized, untapped capacity that we will
explore and exploit before more thought is given to expansion and new equipment."
Serving the customers that it does, C.J. Foods has
been on the forefront of the super-premium, dry pet
food trends. "From the meat-first, to higher and higher
meat content, to grain-free and limited ingredient diets
(LID), the common goal has been to develop a level of
service that is remarkably different from anything else
that's available," Krehbiel says. "And we did that for
many years with just the kibble itself. We have gotten to
the point where changes are more subtle. We're starting
to see inclusions with these already incredible kibbles
becoming but one of the growing trends."
Krehbiel adds, "At the end of the day no matter how
innovative we can be, if it doesn't resonate with the consumer and sell then it doesn't matter how good it is, how
innovative it is, what's in it or what's not in it. C.J. Foods
can't answer that question because we don't market and
sell pet food. Our job and our business is about taking
our customers' ideas and aspirations and figuring out a
way to produce, and package, that product. That's our
world. And we rely on our customers being right about
what the consumer will purchase."
From its broad, insider view of the pet food market,
C.J. Foods seems to have said "yes" to the right kibble
challenges and invested in the right capabilities at the
right time as the demand for unique, value-added, superpremium, extruded pet food has climbed.
PFP

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PET Food Processing - September 2018

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