Last year, the company planned to increase its production from 20,000 lbs. of blended product per day to 50,000 lbs. per day. There would be no change in the company's single, five-day, split-shift operation, which blended and mixed product in the morning and bagged and packaged product in the afternoon. Crew size-three workers on the blend line and three on the packaging line-would stay the same as would the total number of hours worked. And, the 30-day raw materials inventories standard would not change.
"Ingredient Masters had manufactured our existing manual blending system," says Lengacher, "so we consulted with them for a solution." As it turned out, Ingredient Masters had built an automated system for a pharmaceutical company that had a change in plant requirements. "They told us it would be available quickly and could be re-engineered and adapted for our purposes," continues Lengacher.