From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

Cutter cannons.
This approach depends on the contributions of the individuals who know the most
about the area under review – the operators and managers who do the job every day.
“This results in tremendous ownership for the identified improvements and fosters
a culture of continuously reviewing and improving all aspects of the operation,” says
Lloyd Borowski, global vice-president of engineering and manufacturing. “It’s all
about continuous improvement, involving everyone – managers and operators alike
– to eliminate unnecessary activities and costs throughout
the system, to improve safety and quality, and to
give customers 100 percent satisfaction.”
In his 2006 webcast to McCain employees around the
world, CEO Dale Morrison said that MCE will improve
safety, quality, and productivity, first in individual plants
and then across the entire organization. “It will make us
a better company because it captures the imagination,
energy, creativity, perspective, and ideas of our people.”
As just one example of many, he pointed to the device
developed by Ben Jenson, an employee at the Othello,
Washington, plant that helps operators test the jaws on packaging equipment to make
the packaging process more efficient. To honour its inventor, the machine is called a
Ben-dicator.
Someone passing the parking lot of the Lamb Weston potato-processing plant in
Weston, Oregon, in the late 1950s might have glimpsed an unusual sight: the owner
of the plant, Gilbert Lamb, an engineer, shooting potatoes out of a fire hose. He was
doing experiments that later developed into a device known as the Lamb Water Gun
Knife, a major improvement over the simpler cutting devices that Lamb Weston,
McCain, and other processors used when the industry was in its infancy.
The water gun knife uses high-pressure water flow to launch raw potatoes at a
speed of eighty kilometres an hour through a set of steel blades that can be arranged
to produce different sizes and shapes of french fries. McCain licensed the technology
from its competitor, Lamb Weston, on the understanding that McCain would share
any improvements it made in it.
The water gun, as originally designed, took strips out of the square centre of the
potato for french fries and slabs out of the side, which were sent directly to the
specialty product line. McCain wanted to increase the yield of fries from each potato.
It did this by altering the gun to cut the entire potato into strips and then using
the strips unsuitable for fries for the specialty products. The water gun knife
handles more volume than other cutting devices. Most
important, it increases yield by cutting a straight line
through the longest axis of the potato, thereby getting
the longest possible finished product out of it. In other
words, the water gun knife makes the average potato
more valuable.
Customers expect the cones of french fries they buy
in fast food restaurants to be full. “The longer the french
fry, the less weight it takes to fill the container,” explains
Morris. If it is filled with shorter fries, four to five centimetres
long, it will weigh as much or more than one
filled with nine-centimetre-long fries, but it won’t look
as full. That’s why long fries have become the norm in
the quick-service restaurant industry. “Fast food is sold
on the basis of appearance rather than weight, and that
is the primary reason for trying to make the product
longer,” says Morris. Longer fries also have better “plate
coverage” than shorter fries – important for sit-down
restaurants.
Since the first factory began operating, in 1957, every
piece of equipment in a McCain factory has evolved into
something better. Automation is the reason for much
of the improvement. In the early years, for example, all
trimming of potato defects was done manually. During
the 1970s, McCain invested in technology that uses cameras to detect the defects and
automated knives to cut them out. A light is shined on the raw potato strips, which have
been peeled, preheated, and cut but not yet blanched, while a bank of cameras measures
the amount of reflected light. Because a defect absorbs light, the system detects when
one of the strips needs attention, and a knife comes down and slices off the bad part.
In making french fries and other potato products, the raw potato is a major part of
the cost. So the company has become focused on making the most of each potato that
comes into its factories. In 1998, McCain launched Raw Material Utilization (RMU), a
program designed by Carl Morris dedicated to that objective.
130 f rom the Ground up
the home front 131
TOP: Knives are inserted into
the knife box, which is similar
to a cannon barrel: potatoes
are fired through it.
BOTTOM: Potato strips
emerge from a water cutter.