Survival food bar packaging line needed resusciation
Redesign and upgrades of the line yielded a 125 percent increase in throughput.
Datrex is one of the world’s leading manufacturers and distributors of safety and survival equipment and supplies used in the commercial marine industry. Critical among these survival necessities are food bars which, over the past 20 years, has become a continually expanding product line for Datrex in emergency preparedness kits used during earthquakes, flooding and hurricanes.
In mid-2011, Datrex opted to expand and upgrade the line to increase its throughput volume. “We got to a point where we had so many orders coming in that the line just could not handle the production requirements anymore,” says Scott Mills, executive vice president, operations at Datrex. The line manufactures and packages two sizes of survival food bars: 2,400 calorie and 3,600 calorie bars, both made with all-natural ingredients, and supporting a five-year shelf life.