Headquartered in Fostoria, Ohio, The Mennel Milling Company has been on a mission to expand.

For over 138 years, the family-owned firm, which is currently the seventh-largest flour milling company in the U.S., has traditionally produced and distributed its products in bulk quantities via rail car, semi-truck trailer, 2,000-lb. super sacks and 50-lb. bags. However, with the addition of smaller, retail bag pack systems to address consumer demand during and after the pandemic, coupled with assuming full ownership of bakery mix and milling company Renwood Mills in 2022, Mennel has prioritized the efficiency and performance of its quality control inspection and checkweighing solutions.

Seeking to drive operational excellence and standardize equipment, senior corporate packaging engineer Dieter Flick is part of the Mennel team that has been charged with this effort. Flick is responsible for maintaining and upgrading existing equipment, enhancing personnel safety and boosting production efficiency.

Similarly, Johnathan Mace, project engineer at Mennel Milling and Bakery Mix in Newton, N.C., has also been a part of installing new inspection equipment at his location.

The Fortress Raptor Combi system installed at the Newton, N.C., plant features a plastic cover to help prevent loose flour circulating in the environment from settling onto the conveyor, building up and negatively impacting weighing accuracy.

Image courtesy of Fortress Technology.

Less Downtime at Bakery Mix Plant

Since installing its first Raptor Combination metal detector and checkweighing system on the Newton packing line in 2023, Mace reports that it has not incurred any unplanned downtime on the new equipment so far.

The production, packaging and inspection of approximately 750,000 lbs. of flour each day for private-label retail products, foodservice mixes and wholesale bulk flour requires durable and reliable machinery, Mace states.

“In a milling and packaging environment, screens can be easily damaged and clearances can be extremely tight,” he says. “Sometimes the products themselves contain salt and phosphate, which can be corrosive. The Raptor’s stainless-steel construction has held up so far in these challenging environments.”

To optimize performance and ensure that the flour doesn’t accumulate and affect the weight readings, plant technicians regularly clean the Raptor Combination units during each shift.

Another useful design feature is the plastic cover over the HMI panel, Mace says. “This is a great addition, as it helps to prevent damage to the screen,” he says. “This plastic cover helps prevent loose flour circulating in the environment from settling onto the conveyor, building up and negatively impacting weighing accuracy.”

Several customizations were made to the equipment supplied to the Mennel Newton plant. For example, the metal detection aperture on the second Raptor machine installed at Newton is an inch higher than standard. This was required to accommodate the different product formats and pack sizes that come off the existing vertical form, fill and seal pouch-packing system.

Additionally, as a seven-story milling plant with a variety of moving machinery operating around the clock, vibration can affect the performance and signals of sensitive metal detectors and checkweighers. Fortress machines offer a couple of solutions that suppress this noise interference, ensuring that metal detector performance is not affected, reports Fortress spokesperson Ken Atkinson.

With a total of nine current packing lines and growing at the North Carolina plant, Mace says that there is an opportunity for more potential improvements to the lines in the future.

The plastic cover positioned over the HMI panel is another feature that helps to prevent damage to the screen at the Mennel Milling and Bakery Mix plant in Newton, N.C.

Image courtesy of Fortress Technology.

Supporting Digital Capabilities

Tethering multiple front-end production machines to back-end reporting software in real time could be the next step in smart manufacturing. Using an Ethernet connection, Contact 4.0 enables Mennel to review and collect data, as well as securely oversee the performance of an unlimited number of Fortress machines connected to the same network.

This has helped the team’s effort of making informed, well-timed production and brand assurance decisions, as well as maintenance schedules, Flick notes.

“Every morning, the production manager, the maintenance manager and I receive a report automatically generated by Contact 4.0 to assist in our decision making,” he says. “Contact 4.0 clearly displays both the checkweigher’s histogram of batch weight distribution and bag data points to issue concerns over rejects, calculating the amount of product giveaway. These tools help us define problems with our filling system upstream.”

Fortress’ Contact 4.0 digital tool is currently being utilized in Mennel’s Fostoria factory on both the checkweighing and metal detection systems.

Each morning, the production manager, maintenance manager and Dieter Flick receive an emailed report and histogram summary that is automatically generated by Contact 4.0 to assist with decision making.

Image courtesy of Fortress Technology.

Revolutionizing Productivity

To achieve growth targets and meet stricter standards, today’s manufacturers face higher demands for faster, more productive and energy-efficient processes.

“The reliability of these machines and technologies and their ease-of-use, especially when calibrating and testing the inspection equipment, has proven very important to our QA department,” Flick adds. “More importantly, our customers are specifying higher standards for metal detection to avoid any product contamination.”

Facilitating communication in all cyber-physical interactions is imperative to adopt a smart manufacturing approach. When digital transformations are scaled across the entire value chain, the gains can fundamentally transform a food manufacturer’s competitive position, accelerating decision-making and unlocking productivity gains.