National Cranberry Cooperative

National Cranberry Cooperative

National Cranberry Cooperative


Introduction
National Cranberry Cooperative (NCC), owned by cranberry growers, is one of the largest cooperative with operations in principal growing areas of North America. The cranberry industry has witnessed two significant trends over the past few years – economic abandonment of cranberries produced and increasing mechanization of cranberry harvesting. The increase in surplus of cranberries produced over those utilized, led the growers to adopt an agreement to limit the cranberries supplied to the market, thereby, controlling its impact on the market price. The increasing mechanization of cranberry harvesting had potential to result in 20 percent higher yield as compared to dry harvesting. However, a limitation that wet harvested fruit placed on processing was that it shortened the time that harvested fruit could be held. As wet harvesting practices were growing at a significant rate around NCC, it needed to ensure that its operations and process schedules have the capacity to process and handle water harvested berries. The analysis presented below addresses three key challenges faced by NCC:
1. Waiting times experienced during the unloading process of the raw harvested fruit.
2. Capacity to handle projected wet-harvested fruit processing load (70% of total cranberries to be processed)
3. Other cost such as overtime costs and color grading cost

NCC Receiving Plant 1


Figure 1: Process View of RP1



Operation
Number of Units
Resource Capacity per Unit
Total Capacity
Kiwanee Dumper
5
600 bbls1
3000 bbls
Holding Bins (Dry)
16
250 bbls/hr
4000 bbls/hr
Holding Bins (Dry/Wet)
8
250 bbls/hr
2000 bbls/hr
Holding Bins (Wet)
3
400 bbls/hr
1200 bbls/hr
Dechaffing
3
1500 bbls/hr
4500 bbls/hr
Destoning
3
1500 bbls/hr
4500 bbls/hr
Drying
3
200 bbls/hr
600 bbls/hr
Separator
3
400 bbls/hr
1200 bbls/hr
1Average time taken by truck with 75 bbl capacity to unload:7.5 mins. So,...

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