Miller Magazine Issue: 122 February 2020

68 ARTICLE MILLER / FEBRUARY 2020 conditioning of the goods and the capacity of the initial sto- rage that may be coordinated with the conditioning equ- ipment to clean the wheat from impurities, stones, other cereals, and inert material to send it, once cleaned, to the medium and long term storage. Speeds: The calculation of coordinated speeds between the discharging equipment, the conveying equipment, the receiving pit, elevators and cleaning, and conditioning sys- tems will play an important role, as all of them will work in an orchestra combination to discharge the vessel without delays, and to deliver the goods to the process line in the best possible condition and without interruption of the fe- eding lines. Process: A special eye that designers will dedicate to this step together with the engineering of the process lines is to match speeds, capacities, volumes and output with the required quality, meaning better to mill less wheat per day obtaining a better quality of flour and not increasing the flux of process but creating a post problem of quality cont- rol and intrinsic quality itself. PACKAGING AND TEMPORARY STORAGE BEFORE DELIVERY Calculation of the buffer capacity to feed the bagging and packaging lines, calculation of the spaces needed to store the pre-delivery finished products, calculations of how to load and the volumes and speeds needed to load on a day to day basis will give the line the necessary parameters to be respected in order to: • Maintain the production lines in running rhythm wit- hout stoppages, • Keep the goods stored for a short period of time before delivery • Have enough space to store and deliver without short quantities mishaps • Keep the bagging and packaging plants fed without in- terruption FROM HAND SKETCHES AND CALCULATIONS TO FINAL DESIGN A path to be followed to enhance efficiency, cost minimization and process functionality, a path that designers and engineers will keep building up to ob- tain value engineering, applicable to both the actual production units operative, and ideally when projec- ting and planning new facilities. Designers will feed the engineers database with the knowledge of speeds, capacities, yields, vo- lumes, and coordinated process lines in order to enable them to project and program the needed equipment to be installed and the spaces needed for the civil buildings, not only for the production lines but also for the accessory services, that are a sine qua non-condition to have an industry running, Administration blocks, services areas, parking avai- lability, analysis, and laboratory spaces, maintenan- ce workshops, amenities sectors and all related to human labor well being, that will make efficiency still higher and functionality optimized. DESIGN AND VALUE ENGINEERING AS A CONCLUSION The analysis and redesign of existing facilities has proven that up to a 35% of direct and indirect costs have been saved in various process plants by bringing in specialized designers to “study” and “analyze” the actual situation and ask themselves how to improve the distances from storage to process, the speeds of discharging and storing, the dis- tance from process to bagging, the speeds and capacities of each step of process coordinated with other process steps, the isolation of the Administration block and analysis labo- ratories to avoid vibration and noise from process lines, the rescaling of all conveying paths, elevation systems and land transport of final goods…In other words to re“think” the whole line on a more competitive, efficient and functional coordinated order that will save costs, time and surely im- prove working conditions. On new facilities, the first thing to do nowadays is the feasibility study of the project, with a strong vision of the strategy of process coordination behind it, designers and engineers will layout the final project only after the strategic calculation described above has been done and tested mat- hematically till there are no mishaps found. In both cases, may it be a new facility or the refurbishing of an existing facility, the strategic design, and engineering applied by commonly shared information of process and the full chain from supply to final delivery of final product, will play a significant role both in the economic result, as well as in the quality of product and working conditions of the industry. Three objectives paramount to the food industry today, economic results, quality of product, environment and wor- king conditions.