World Grain - September 2010 - 91

MILLINGOPERATIONS

baker's requirement, it could cost the
miller $10 per tonne of flour. No other
issue is more important to understand,
measure and manage.
MILL: DASHBOARD - ENGINE
Across your control room, you must
also have the dials and gauges to allow
you to take control of the mill's financial
performance in a constantly changing
environment. Much the same way you
look at the dashboard of the car before
each trip, you must approach the mill in
the same fashion. At a bare minimum,
you must ask questions related to your
wheat supply each day - questions that
relate to quantity of inventory (How
much gas is in the tank?), supply logistics (How far to the nearest gas station?), current wheat costs (price per
gallon), the value of one class versus
another (premium grade fuel versus
standard grade), and opportunities for
wheat value improvement in the next
tender compared to your competition
(buying gas today versus waiting until
tomorrow).
The questions don't stop at the elevator. They continue when you consider
wheat blending opportunities. These
questions include: What is the best
blend for the lowest cost wheat mix
(setting the fuel injection for maximum
miles per gallon) versus the best blend
for milling yield (setting the fuel injection for speed)? Or maybe it's the best
blend to maximize flour strength in baking (fuel injectors are set to limit technician involvement).
It goes without saying that moisture
added at the mill is equally critical to
profitability as moisture delivered in the
wheat. The gauge in this case is finished
flour moisture and wheat moisture to
B-1. Gauging the mill's success or opportunity can be done with online NIR
equipment measuring flour moisture
on a continuous basis, or it can be done
manually by recording and comparing
lab results of milled flour moisture to
wheat temper moistures of the previous
day. Adjustments must be made in moisture added at tempering for environmen-

tal changes such as mill temperature and
relative humidity.
The mill roll floor is like the gas pedal in the car analogy. You can often get
more wheat through the mill by pushing a little harder, but your gas mileage
or yield may suffer. Understanding the
balance between the wheat choice, the
mill throughput and the yield potential
is important. As one example, the value
of 1% increase in milling yield from
75% to 76% would be worth just over
$4 per tonne of flour sold today. This
would be about $3 per tonne of wheat
purchased. So to turn this "gauge data"
into usable information, you might
say that if a particular type of wheat
allowed you to increase your extraction by 1%, you could pay up to $3 per
tonne more and still break even on the
purchase.
An opposing view would be to consider the cost of operating the mill using
a wheat type that required a reduction
in the load to B-1 in order to maintain
the same yield. This might be equivalent to taking your car on a trip towing
a small trailer with extra luggage. The
fuel efficiency of the car would suffer
even though the distance traveled would
be the same if you weren't towing the
trailer. In this milling example, a 5% reduction in B-1 loading could raise the
cost of milling the 1 tonne of flour by
about $2.50.
Even packaging can have a set of
gauges that the mill manager can use to
evaluate performance. These gauges are
over-pack, miss-pack, damage, moisture
loss, shrink and labor hours per tonne of
flour packaged.
As a place to begin, consider tracking the amount of flour recorded as
produced on the mill flour scale to the
amount of flour invoiced. Once the mill
scales have been calibrated, the numbers should be reasonably close. If not,
the mill is losing flour and is broadly defined as shrink. This is like a leak in the
car's gas tank, the worst thing possible
for fuel efficiency. It could be that every
bag that is packaged has too much flour
in it, or customers haven't been invoiced

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Calculation of added flour value
at increased water absorption
Flour with normal water
absorption capacity
Kg

Cost/Kg

Total

Flour A

100

$0.60

$60

Water

Instant yeast

$12

Shortening

$1.50

Sugar

$0.60

$1.20

$0.25

Salt

no cost

167

$0.25
$76.45

Value/kg of dough

$0.458

Value per 100 kg of dough

$45.78

Flour with 2% added water
absorption capacity
Kg

Cost/Kg

Total

Flour B

100

$0.609

$60.92

Water

Instant yeast

$12

Shortening

$1.50

Sugar

$0.60

$1.20

$0.25

Salt

no cost

169

$77.37

Value/kg of dough

$0.458

Value per 100 kg of dough

$45.78

Increased value of Flour B/MT

$9.20

for the flour delivered. Either way profits are draining away.
FLOUR: DASHBOARD - PERFORMANCE
The mill's quality assurance laboratory is to the mill what the tune-up
technicians are to the modern engine. A
consistent performing car needs regular tune-ups, and a mill's flour consistency performance is just as important
to measure. For the bakery customer,
consistency of product quality might be
of even greater value than the relative
level of quality itself. As bakers push to
improve their products and streamline
their processes, they must receive flour
that performs consistently day after day.
This consistency comes in the form of
water absorption (flour moisture), rheological properties such as dough toler93

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World Grain - September 2010

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