Results:

Optimal Meat Formulation saved a large meat processor $2.5 million per year in formulating its dry sausage products and reducing excessive shrink.

Summary:

Optimal Meat Formulation helped a large meat processing company save $2.5 million per year in formulating its dry sausage products by determining the mix of meat trimmings to purchase and the formulation of recipes for each product based on changing raw materials prices, vendor trim specifications, perishability of the materials, and other considerations. Of particular importance in achieving these savings was optimizing the shrink percentage to the product recipes to reduce excess drying and results in products with the targeted finish product composition.

Story:

A large meat processing company makes dry sausage products at a processing plant and uses the Optimal Meat Formulation to determine optimal recipes of meat ingredients to create recipes for dry sausage. Applications of the software are used to determine meats to buy and how to combine them into pre-blends and finished products, assignment of inventory to production, and assembly of meats into batches.

Besides the normal meat formulation challenge of complicated product specifications, meat ingredient prices changing daily, and the fat, moisture and protein composition of the ingredients varying, calculating the optimal percent shrink is mathematically a nonlinear equation (very complex). Consequently, the company has to change recipes — including percent shrink — routinely to take advantage of the most recent prices, availabilities and compositions of ingredients and to continue to meet standards for fat, moisture, protein, color, texture, species, labels, and a variety of other qualities.

Optimal Meat Formulation saved $2.5 million per year at the one plant.

Similar applications exist for formulating other meat products, including emulsified and cooked sausage (hot dogs), canned meats, pizza toppings, and ground beef.

Benefit:

Savings of $2.5 million per year at one plant.

Visit our website at www.optimalanswers.com to see what kind of savings you can achieve. Optimal typically saves 5 percent to 10 percent, often more.