11 minute read
INGREDIENTS
There has been a lot of waste reduction since Ben Furney Flour Mills starting the Lean manufacturing journey.
Ben Furney Flour Mills is a successful ingredient manufacturer that has embraced Lean manufacturing. Mike Wheeler explains why it has taken the journey.
Located in the heart of the New South Wales’ wheat belt, in the town of Dubbo, Ben Furney Flour Mills is a family-run business that has been going for more than three generations.
With the company motto being “big enough to matter, small enough to care”, like a lot of family-run businesses it makes up a core part of the local community with more than 80 plus employees helping make the business tick. Being located in regional Australia doesn’t mean the company isn’t open to big ideas. Recently it has taken on board many of the principles associated with Lean manufacturing as it realised that streamlining processes and training staff in more than one aspect of the business was a win-win situation for the company and its employees; it cut down the costs for the company while offering diversity to its labour force.
Linden Kotzur is Ben Furney’s service operations manager and is a keen endorser of many of the Lean philosophies utilised by the company. He was there when the company first instigated the process and he has three main pieces of advice for those thinking about starting the journey – the first being research.
“As a company, we had been discussing the different options available and looking at ways of continuous improvement,” he said. “We started to research more and more into Lean manufacturing and look at what the advantages were and where we could then apply this. We spoke to people in the industry and talked to many different parties. We then aligned ourselves with a consultant in the field who was experienced and had also worked with the implementation into the workplace.”
The second part is to implement it into small steps. Do not go all out and try and convert the whole production process at once. It will not work.
“My biggest point would be to say that you need to start with some small tasks first,” he said. “Isolate one small particular area. Go through the exercise and consult with all involved. Let people evaluate the change and find their own benefits in it. If you try and implement it too big, too wide, too far over too many tasks, people will lose the input and motivation because they are not seeing a return.
“Your first attempts at the Lean process need to be very carefully planned. They need to be small achievable tasks. You need to see how it will go right from the beginning. It might be something as simple as reorganising the spare parts cupboard of the workshop.
Once the company started
implementing Lean, it reviewed what it had done so far and looked at the different pros and cons.”
Kotzur said it is important for a company to keep on top of things – and if you are not doing that – you will start to fall behind. And he sees some very serious consequences if you do start to fall behind with the implementation.
“We started the journey to streamline processes and keep our all-around advantage – and to do that you have to be on top of your game all the time,” he said. “If we hadn’t done that, we could have continued on for a while, but I can see that we would have eventually begun to fall behind in the marketplace. We wouldn’t be as competitive as we could be and with the way the world is at the moment, you need every advantage and efficiency that you can achieve.”
As with any change in structure to a business, there can be resistance, and it was no different with Ben Furney when it started to implement Lean. However, Kotzur said that as long as management communicates well, then there shouldn’t be too many issues as most workers on the ground will soon begin to see the advantages. And it’s not all about streamlining processes but making the tasks easier for all.
“With anything new, or changes going on, you have some resistance. I think it is important to openly communicate to staff what is happening and taking small steps at a time, which is key to the success,” he said. “You have to communicate well with your staff and let them know what is going on and explain why you are doing what you’re doing. And you need to emphasise the advantages of going down this track for all involved.
“At the end of the day, it is making the employees work easier. It’s making it more systemised and easier for all to follow. It allows for the rotation of staff and they are confident taking on new tasks
Streamlining processes is key to Lean manufacturing.
knowing we have good processes in place that they can easily pick up or review. It also gives them the opportunity to rotate through the different sections knowing that we have systems in place that they can easily adapt to. In this aspect, also make sure there is ownership at all different levels of the business.”
And what have been some of the main outcomes of the implementation? What about from a practical point of view when dealing with customers? There has been a lot of waste reduction and therefore increased production capacity. This is because the company has become more efficient in its processes. For example, it’s only producing what it needs for individual customers. It can do so by using the history of dealing with a particular customer and the records it has of those dealings means it can combine all that knowledge with the level of product it produces.
“When we’ve reviewed our customers’ purchasing habits; by and large the majority of them were pretty predictable,” he said. “When staff started looking at their average purchasing quantities, they weren’t varying that much. By integrating that history into our programming, we’re manufacturing in a lean method; we’re combining what we need into minimal runs, and we know that we are going to have that stock ready for that customer.
“We’ve sat down and analysed it. For example, we might have eight people buying one of our particular products, they buy X amount of quantity. Instead of making that batch up four times a month, we might only make it once or twice a month, making sufficient quantity to address the needs of our regular customers.”
He said there will always be a company that might suddenly require an abnormal quantity of a product, but because Ben Furney has become lean in its production, it has the capacity to go back and complete a special production run if required. These wins have had far reaching positive benefits for its customer base and its position in the marketplace.
His final point, and one that any aficionado of Lean knows, but always needs reinforcing, is that it is never over.
“I look at Lean as a continuous process that is ongoing. It also needs continuous evaluation. As with many things in the workplace, you need to have communication at the right levels,” he said. “You need to isolate and look at the different areas and see where we can get improvement. I believe that as a company we still have a long way to go, but I see continuous evaluation all the time. It is a great process in the workplace. Our long-term goal is to go through it as we’re going. I don’t see it stopping ever.” F
Wasted apple pomace from juicing is drained and ground into a thin layer to be dried out and dehydrated.
Apple flour making inroads into commercial baking applications
By thinking outside the square, ingredient manufacturer Forbidden Foods has found a niche that might soon become mainstream. Food & Beverage Industry News explains.
Forbidden Foods Group was launched in 2010 by Jarrod Milani and Marcus Brown who both share a passion to provide some of the best health foods across Australia and internationally. Forbidden Foods flagship product of Black Rice was released to the retail and foodservice market nationally and internationally. Since launching, Forbidden Foods have expanded into supplying a range of speciality rice flours to food manufacturers. Its bespoke rice flour range has been used in baked goods, soups, baby foods, snacking and plant-based foods. Having success with their rice flours, Forbidden Foods explored the potential of releasing a range of Australian-made, new and exotic flours that are not offered in the global market. In 2019, Sensory Mill was created under Forbidden Foods Group, to provide ingredients for the food enthusiast. Sensory Mill offers a range of alternative products for use in manufacturing including powders, grains and blends and its newest release of an exotic flour range. The flour range accentuates the core belief of Sensory Mill, which is to strive towards improved sustainability and traceability of products, while providing enriching ingredients.
The company’s newest standout product – which was released in January 2020 – is its apple flour, which is available in the retail and foodservice market. To promote the idea of Farm-toPlate, Sensory Mill has collaborated with Bellevue Orchard and Australian Dehydrated Food (ADF) to promote and introduce Australia’s first apple flour to the market.
Bellevue Orchard is a thirdgeneration, family-run apple orchard located in Victoria, Australia and have been producing apple juice since 1998.
The orchard is owned by two brothers, Robert and Joe Russo, who
continue to work there, however now run by Joe’s daughter Bernadette and Robert’s son Nick.
ADF is an Australian company that specialises in advanced and rapid dehydration technology to produce the dried foods sourced from Australia.
ADF’s Chris Mamas worked alongside Forbidden Foods and Bellevue to meet outlined requirements and specifications.
“Our aim is to work with natural, unadulterated raw material inputs, resulting in the most aromatic, tasty and nutrient-rich powdered foods on the market, which I believe we have achieved with the apple flour,” he said.
Forbidden Foods, Bellevue Orchard and ADF all have a strong ethos against food wastage, which was the basis upon their collaboration for Forbidden Foods to release, market and promote the apple flour to the retail and foodservice market. Nick Russo indicated that food wastage avoidance has always been a priority of theirs.
“Our goal has always been to make use of every part of the apple. Working with Forbidden Foods and ADF is the final piece of making this a reality with Bellevue being a zerowaste facility,” he said.
“We hope to divert over 800,000kg of wastage per year, into a premium product for market,” said Russo.
Bellevue worked alongside Forbidden Foods and ADF, to initiate production of apple fibre from the pomace in a patented process.
Bellevue realised the apple pomace wastage remaining after the juicing process was becoming costly to re-distribute to farmers for feed, or to move to landfill.
Moving the apple pomace was starting to take a strain on the local environment surrounding the orchard, with potential of having widespread effects.
After 18 months of trials, technology was developed for efficient dehydration of apple fibre to produce a food ingredient for human consumption.
The wasted apple pomace from juicing was drained and ground
There are many nutritional benefits to apple flour. Forbidden Foods’ founders Marcus Brown and Jarrod Milani.
into a thin layer to be dried out and dehydrated. Once the pomace was efficiently dried, it enters the multistep milling process that produced a fine flour ready for packaging and manufacturing. Incorporating apple flour into products on an industrial scale can reap many nutritional benefits to the population.
Finished products with apple flour acting as a core ingredient will provide a nutritionally rounded profile.
Due to the high dietary fibre content of the flour, it has a wide range of antioxidants that are believed to assist in the reduction
Photo credit: Nick Russo and Bellevue Orchard
of cholesterol. The soluble and insoluble fibre within the flour will regulate the digestive system while promoting bowel health and growth of beneficial gut bacteria. Milled apple flour is extremely fine, allowing it to be versatile in manufacturing and production.
It has many applications ranging from acting as a thickening agent in sauces and mixes, to being incorporated into bakery and snacking products. The by-product flour is a great absorber of liquid causing this product to be an efficient binder in recipes, particularly in raw snack products that undergo minimal heat exposure.
Having a low sugar content accompanying the high soluble and insoluble dietary fibre, this flour can help control blood sugar levels. Having low-fat content, it is a suitable ingredient when manufacturing low fat products for consumption.
The properties of the flour allow it to act as a replacer while extending shelf life for long-lasting and shelfstable products when stored in ambient temperatures. Apple flour is said to have a naturally sweet flavour that is not overpowering to the palate. The inclusion of the apple flour in baking may avoid the need for additional sweeteners.
Being gluten free, apple flour can be blended with all-purpose glutenfree flour to become a baking staple for the gluten intolerant community. This product can be blended with an array of flours for usage in baking to create high fibre goods. F
