Keeping food flowing

Keeping food flowing

Using deep understanding to solve manufacturing problems

Context

Our client needs to pump food mixtures around to make its products at scale. Despite their extensive experience, one of the mixtures was behaving unpredictably, causing stoppages and losing efficiency. We were asked to help understand what was going on and identify the most important factors to investigate.

Approach

We started with the fundamental science of flow, and added features specific to the formulation which was giving trouble. These were drawn from scientific literature about the material, and a review of analogous systems. This led us to consider how the microstructure of the material, and how it had been treated, could affect the flow of the material. We generated hypotheses about which of these factors were likely to be the most important. We suggested experiments to quickly test these hypotheses and inform how our client could move forward with the problem.

Impact

The client now knows where to start investigating a complex problem which was reducing efficiency. It is doing the tests we recommended, and has a line of sight to unblocking the problem. Our client contact said: “This is what I needed – it’s exactly why we use an external partner like Innovia”.

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