Process manufacturing definitions
These definitions of terms are used in process manufacturing.
- Gross weight and gross volume
- The gross weight and gross volume of all the ingredients in a formula is determined through density calculations based on the setup parameters. The gross weight and volume are important because of the capacity of the mixing vessel. If you generally use one size of mixing vessel and then change to use a smaller vessel, then you must recalculate the formula to use percentage amounts of the BOM items to fit the capacity of the vessel.
- Net weight and net volume
- This is the weight and volume of the item at the end of the formulation process. Some weight or volume might be lost during formulation, for example, through evaporation.
- Loss percentage
- This indicates the theoretical volume that you expect to lose during processing of the formula. For example, when you boil water you might lose 10% of the water’s volume during the time it is boiling. This percentage can be defined on the water line item of the formula.
Another example: When you put cookies through an extruder, you might expect to lose 5% of the batter. This percentage would be defined on the formula header.
- Loss constant
- This is similar to loss percentage, but it is a constant amount. For example, if the Quality Control person always takes 10 kg of the WIP amount for evaluation from every batch, set the Loss Constant to 10 kg.
- Rework
- If you have a batch that is not quite perfect, but is not bad enough to be destroyed, you can rework some small percentage of that batch into other later batches. In that case, you could set up these different versions of your formula:
- The standard version with the usual percentages of all the ingredients
- A second version with the ingredients and some percentage of rework
- Solubility
- Solubility determines how much volume is added when you add an ingredient to a formula. For example, the solubility of a pinch of salt is 100%, meaning that the salt is completely dissolved and adds no volume.
- Yield
- The yield compares the amount packaged out of the batch to the amount that went
into the batch. For example, if you used 200 lbs of the formula in a batch, and you
produced package A, which consumed 100 lbs of formula, and package B, which consumed 75
lbs of fomula, then your yield for the batch was 87.5% (175/200).
The Totals tab on the Formulas form shows sums of weight, volume, and so on for the components in a formula. This includes the theoretical yield for the formula.
When you run batches, you can then compare the actual yields to the theoretical yield and look for variances.