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Newsletter summer 2002 |
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AMPI Team Decides
to Reduce Waste
AMPI’s Dawson plant waste reduction
team saved the company $60,000 in its first year of problem
solving.
The Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI)
plant in Dawson knows making decisions as a team can save
money. The 155-employee plant specializes in milk receiving,
cheese processing and drying, and aseptic packaging—a
food packaging system that can keep food fresh for several
months. The Dawson plant needed to reduce water use and cut
the amount of solids in its wastewater. After talking with
MnTAP food processing specialist John
Polanski, a waste reduction team was formed.
Developing the Team
The
Dawson plant recruited team members based on their willingness
to participate and ability to make sound decisions for the
company.
“We tried to
get one person from each department in the plant to participate.
We also had one office person whose untrained eye was able
to point out things the rest of us missed,” said Dave
VanEngen, Dawson plant loss control coordinator.
“They did a
great job bringing together people with different backgrounds
and experiences,” said John.
Once the team was
created John educated members on how to effectively function
and make decisions as a team.
Team Decision Making
The waste reduction team routinely
toured the plant floor looking for areas to reduce waste.
At team meetings the group developed and selected waste reduction
strategies using the tools John had presented such as prioritizing
tasks, brainstorming and answering the “five W’s”—what
is the waste, where is it created, why is it created, when
is it created and what can be changed.
Waste reduction opportunities were
prioritized based on the amount of waste created, how much
it cost the company to manage and the cost of improvements.
“Problems like bad leaks were
fixed right away. So were other things that could easily be
done by our maintenance department,” said VanEngen.
When strategies required new equipment
purchases or a large investment, the team carefully evaluated
all associated costs before deciding how to proceed.
Results
The Dawson plant’s waste reduction
team saved $60,000 in its first year. The team decided to
install a holding tank for food by-products. Now, rather than
going down the drain, 30,000 to 50,000 pounds of by-products
are pumped out of the tank daily for farmers to use as livestock
feed. Reclaiming vacuum pump water in the cheese and drying
departments cut water use.
“Many times you walk through
the plant and don’t notice things that need to be fixed,
you’ve got blinders on,” said VanEngen. “With
John’s help developing a team, we were able to see things
we had been missing.”
Additional Resources
For more information about pollution
prevention teams see:
For more information about feeding food
by-products to livestock see:
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