Stellar Team
These informative Food for Thought blog posts are collaborations of Stellar employees, therefore no one author is credited. Stellar employs professional architects, engineers, designers and construction managers with expertise across many industries in the areas of plant design and construction, process engineering, packaging, industrial refrigeration, distribution centers, thermal envelope and mechanical/utility systems.
When performing a design review, BIM gives all of your food processing plant’s stakeholders — operations, maintenance, safety, and engineering teams — an opportunity to explore the facility in a three-dimensional mode. Viewing the design in this 3D model helps visualize the building space so owners can make more informed decisions in these areas:
Food processing plants are embracing business information modeling (BIM) as the new standard in facility design. BIM’s three-dimensional format allows designers to give plant owners, managers and employees a virtual walk-through of the facility. By viewing virtual construction elements such as walls, windows, slabs and roofs, they can then make the most informed decisions on process and work flows.
It is critical to plan for the future when designing your food processing plant’s mechanical systems. We find that many plants are now undergoing expensive retrofits because future needs were not appropriately considered. Not only are retrofits expensive, but if new equipment is not sized and sequenced effectively, it can significantly affect your energy costs. To avoid these issues, here are four budget considerations to address when designing your plant’s mechanical system:
Continue Reading “Four Key Budget Considerations in Designing Your Plant’s Mechanical System”
More and more food manufacturers are developing energy management and resource conservation programs, focusing on water and heat as the two resources that offer the greatest opportunity for significant savings in the long run.
Continue Reading “Food Manufacturers Look to Water and Heat for Resource Conservation”
Your food processing plant’s mechanical system will affect the entire facility’s operating efficiency. Water, steam and gas are the basic functions required to run any processing plant, so the design process must begin with a full evaluation of these resources. Your mechanical engineers should address four critical areas in the early stages of your plant’s design:
Continue Reading “Food Processing Mechanical Systems : 4 Critical Areas To Address Early On”
Food processing facilities in the U.S. have long made food safety one of their top priorities. Unfortunately that’s not the case in China. In recent years the country has been plagued with numerous high-profile food safety scandals, from grilled kebabs made from cat meat to pork buns so loaded with bacteria that they glow in the dark.
Continue Reading “Food Safety in China: What Food Processors Need to Know”
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) expanded the FDA’s authority to regulate the conditions of food manufacturing facilities and how products are produced, manufactured, transported, imported and marketed in the United States. Food safety audits, whether conducted by an internal team or by an outside consultant, will ensure that your food processing plant is in full compliance with FDA regulations. Continue Reading “Five Ways to Ensure Your Food Safety Audit Goes Well”
Any food or beverage plant facility that uses clean-in-place (CIP) technology to clean tanks, piping or product lines without disassembly three to seven times a week should implement a reuse design, provided cross-contamination is unlikely. Here are four reasons why:
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Many food companies are transitioning to eco-friendly packaging as a way to preserve the environment and to appeal to environmentally conscious customers. The options available in eco-friendly packaging and the benefits companies can reap by going green make it an easy, smart transition.
Types of eco-friendly packaging:
Continue Reading “Food Companies Go Green With Eco-Friendly Packaging”
Your team relies on HMI screens to monitor real-time performance of your refrigeration control systems. But if your dashboards are not presenting that information in a clear, usable format, you’re not getting a clear picture. Your HMI should present performance metrics in a format that’s customized for your system to allow your team to effectively diagnose, analyze and manage your systems.
Your HMI screens should include an overview of the entire plant in addition to a single view of the machine room. Each piece of equipment can be animated and color-coded to show operational status, capacity, pressures, communication errors and other functions. Alarms and other critical issues are easily recognizable with pop-ups and red animation.
