As part of its commitment to digitization and staying ahead of the competition, US company George Chiala Farms is one of many vegetable processors globally using the Tomra Insight data platform.
GC Farms specializes in the production of prepared plant-based ingredients for well-known consumer brands that sell their products, such as soups, sauces, and frozen entrees, in the United States.
The company operates two processing plants located in Hollister and Morgan Hill, central California. Throughout the year, it employs approximately 500 people and processes about 68 million kilos of raw vegetables, some of which are grown by GC Farms and others by outside vendors.
"The quality of our raw material can vary widely, but the product we deliver to our customers must always be of high quality," stated GC Farms' COO Charles Cutler.
Tomra Insight offers great benefits
Tomra Insight collects data in near real-time and stores it securely in the cloud so that it can be accessed from anywhere via web-based desktop and mobile devices. Since this data platform continuously measures the quality of the material flow from the processing line, operators can quickly make adjustments to the machine settings in response to the changes in the composition of the material on the line.
Tomra Insight provides detailed data that was previously inaccessible, so managers can now make business and operational decisions based on more comprehensive information.
This information has great potential value. Downtime can be reduced by monitoring the status of the machine. Additionally, performance variations can be evaluated to improve efficiency. In addition, the company has found that it is possible to measure the quality of raw materials to agree on a fair price for them.
The GC Farms Morgan Hill facility currently uses two Tomra Sentinel II sorters and one Tomra 5A sorter. The Hollister plant also uses a Tomra 5A, and two additional pieces of equipment: a Genius and a Blizzard free-fall machine. The company expects to install two new free-fall sorters by the end of 2021.
So far all 3 Morgan Hill machines and Hollister Tomra 5A have been connected to Tomra Insight. This has allowed having online access to the data of the machines of both plants.
For more information:
Tomra
www.tomra.com