Keeping the Productivity Commitment

New product-flow system is engineered to help Ken's Foods meet ongoing goal of peak operating productivity.

When you're in a business as hotly competitive as the one Ken's Foods is in, you have to maximize productivity in every aspect of your operation. As the country's biggest privately held manufacturer of salad dressings, Ken's Foods competes with some of the biggest names in the food industry.

But the Marlboro, Mass.-based company is more than holding its own. Ken's Foods has enjoyed double-digit growth for a number of years now and has some aggressive expansion plans for the future.

The company's commitment to peak productivity can be seen at its production and distribution center in Marlboro. The 310,000 square-foot facility features advanced computer controls, touch screen technology, and the latest in palletization equipment. And streamlining the flow of product throughout that facility is a series of integrated conveyors from Hytrol.

The installation was completed in January 2000, fully automating what had been a largely manual operation. "We were hand palletizing the cases from gravity conveyors located at the end of our production lines," says David A. Muskopf, the company's vice president of engineering. "With the new installation we've become more productive, and we're making more effective use of our people."

The Ken's Foods engineering team worked closely with Stokes Material Handling Systems of Doylestown, Pa., in designing and implementing the installation. Stokes is an experienced systems integrator and distributor of Hytrol conveyor equipment.

A Streamlined Flow

The cases are sealed and labeled in their respective production areas-retail or food service. They move from the discharge lines in production onto spiral conveyors manufactured by Ryson. The spiral units bring the cases up to horizontal power conveyors, which transport the product from the production area into the distribution center and to the palletizers.

The cases make this journey swiftly and safely. Brake belts engineered into the system keep the cases from accumulating on the curves. "This was a cost effective way of assuring that product flowed smoothly while maximizing case density in the accumulation sections," says Neal Feigles, the project manager for Stokes.     
The two retail lines run parallel to one another on the lower level. They each feed a dedicated Columbia palletizer. The food service lines, running parallel above the retail lines, feed a single multi-line palletizer. Belt conveyors are used to move the food service cases down to a Hytrol model LRA merge conveyor. This conveyor diverts an accumulated pallet load from either food service line onto the common infeed of the food service palletizer.
The cases accumulate on a small section of gravity conveyor before entering the palletizers. After palletization, the load is discharged onto a chain-driven live roller conveyor. Pallets from the multi-line palletizer are moved through a stretch wrapper. Stretch wrappers soon will be added to the two retail lines as well. Forklifts carry the completed orders to the shipment staging area. From there, they are trucked to Ken's Foods customers.

In short, the product flow is clean, simple, and direct. There's no unnecessary steps or wasted motion.

Supporting a Growth Track

"It was a smooth installation and really painless from our side," says Engineering VP Muskopf. "And we got the results we were looking for." The key result: The capability to move close to 400,000 thousand cases a week out of Marlboro without a hitch.

In fact, the installation went so well that Ken's Foods is replicating it at the company's production facility in McDonough, Georgia. The same types of conveyors and palletizers are being used, and Stokes Material Handling Systems is in charge of systems integration. In the near future, Ken's Foods will break ground on a new production-distribution complex to serve the western states.

And as the growth track continues, Ken's Foods plans to continually seek that productivity edge-in its conveyors and in every other part of the operation.

The Ken's Foods Installation

Sealed and labeled cases move from the retail and food service production areas up the spiral conveyors and onto horizontal power conveyors. Two foods service lines run in parallel above two retail lines into the distribution center. Brake belts engineered into the system keep cases from jamming in the curves. The retail lines feed two dedicated palletizers. The food service lines merge into one palletizer line. After pallets are built, they are discharged onto chain-driven rollers. Pallets move through stretch wrappers and then to end of line. Forklifts transport the pallets to shipment staging area.

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