With market demands and supply line capacities at a high level, a client approached Agilitech to redesign and replace existing processing equipment during a limited window of 6 weeks for a shutdown.

Because of the time constraints and complexity of the project the Food and Beverage team at Agilitech worked with the client to perform the conceptual engineering/design, detailed engineering, procurement, and construction management to ensure an on time and on budget solution.

The Agilitech Food and Beverage team worked with the client to extensively test new processing equipment off site and choose the best new technologies. Agilitech then completely redesigned the processing line, adding state-of-the-art equipment including steam blanchers, optical sorting, high speed bagging, and PLC control systems. Agilitech developed the equipment specifications for each piece of equipment and worked with multiple vendors to customize the equipment to meet the client’s specific needs.

Agilitech created the bid packages for all contractor disciplines, held bid meetings and job walks, performed bid analysis, and selected the contractors. The Agilitech procurement group facilitated all of the requisitions to generate the purchase orders and also reviewed and approved invoicing for payment and tracked the spending for the entire project. The Agilitech purchasing group also tracked all equipment and materials to ensure everything was on-site prior to the shutdown.

Agilitech provided 7 day coverage for the entire construction period and and the entire demolition, room renovation, new equipment installation, start up, commissioning, and debugging of the system was completed 3 days ahead of schedule and on budget.

In order to successfully relocate an existing processing and packaging line from a facility in Salt Lake City, the Bakersfield facility required help devising a capital expense budget and execution plan.

The Agilitech team collaborated with the Bakersfield team to complete multiple design iterations along with budgets for possible concepts. This allowed the client to select the best fit for their current and future operational needs. Key factors in relocating the line to the new plant location required the team to look at line efficiencies and product quality issues — both short term and long term.
Agilitech provided process flow diagrams along with materials flow analysis to properly size the ancillary equipment that would support the new location. The project included upgrading several of the SKU’s with ingredients and upgrading several of the key components used in the processing of this product. To address the line efficiencies and product quality issues, the packaging equipment was rearranged and redesigned; these updates would reduce the hand pack operations and improve throughput compared with its original installation configuration.

The Agilitech “concept to completion” approach resulted in successfully reconfiguring and reinstalling the processing line in the new Bakersfield location. The facility now reaps the benefits of improved product quality, increased line efficiencies, and a reduction in waste as well as labor costs.

In an effort to minimize water consumption from the city water supply and help with ongoing California drought concerns, the Modesto facility decided to install a system to reuse the existing water supply — ultimately reducing the need for city water.

The Agilitech Food and Beverage team worked with the client to generate the current water mapping, as this first step would help define the needs and properly size the system. From there it was determined that the client could capture waste cooling water, filter it, remove any oil and contaminants, and then cool it for reuse.

After working through the budget phase of the project and justifying the return on investment (ROI), the Agilitech team delivered a detailed design package to collect and process the cooling water, including: an oil separator; a set of buffer tanks; a multi-cell cooling tower; all pumps, piping, and instrumentation needed to integrate the system.

Because of the complexity of project and the need to integrate multiple vendor packages, the Modesto facility awarded construction management to the Agilitech team. This made for a smooth transition from the engineering phase into the construction phase — with Agilitech managing the entire installation, including start up, commissioning, and debugging of the entire system.

With the Agilitech team employing good engineering practices, the facility now reuses 65% of their existing water, saving the city approximately 63 million gallons annually.

Inspired by the ability of the Agilitech Food and Beverage team to understand the needs of the customer and move from conceptualizing to implementing the solution, this project has prompted the company to find additional ways to save water consumption — with a goal to get 100% of their water needs without drawing on local sources.

A local pistachio huller wanted to increase their hulling capability. Realizing their existing facility was outdated, they approached Agilitech to design a brand-new facility. We worked with the client through a 4-year multi-phased installation.

The Agilitech Food and Beverage team worked with the client to determine the scope of installation through each of the different phases — using state-of-the-art 3D modeling to provide equipment layout of the processing equipment, dust collection, waste handling, as well as the plant utilities, interconnecting structure, and piping. This allowed the client to see the progression of the project through the different phases of installation, helping to ensure that each phase was installed as efficiently as possible.

Our team managed the materials balance and process flow diagrams; the part of the final configuration included (7) truck unloading pits, preclean conveyors, and hulling equipment to process and dry the nuts for conveyance to the storage silos.

Hull materials were removed with a water flume system, separated, and the excess wastewater sent to a treatment area. Dust collection and empty shell handling were upgraded and improved to handle larger volumes and greater efficiencies.

The optimized process used by the Agilitech team resulted in the new facility achieving 105% of the throughput goal and increasing processing to over 300,000 pounds an hour— while still meeting the scheduled timeframe for construction.

Thanks to the ability of the Agilitech Food and Beverage team to holistically engineer and design the facility from the ground up, this became the model for future expansions of two more hulling facilities, greatly expanding the client’s ability to process their increasing harvest needs.

Agilitech collaborated with a local food manufacturer to provide automation and design services to employ enhancements to their current operations in juice and dressing lines. Key focus areas included the need to improve line efficiencies and optimize or reduce labor.

The Agilitech team worked with the client to complete multiple design iterations and provided capex budgeting for various design concepts allowing the customer to select the optimal solution to meet their budget and schedule.

Our team provided process flow diagrams, along with materials flow analysis, to properly size the automated transfer from the bottle filling lines into the HPP (High Pressure Processing) pasteurizer, and out to labeling and casepacking. The project included upgrading several of the SKUs with new caps and labels, researching new OEM vendor equipment, adding leak detection equipment, and more automated palletizing.

The upstream equipment flow was redesigned to reduce the hand pack operations required before the HPP process. After the HPP, the flow was redesigned to allow for new labels, leak detection, and more automated casepacking and palletizing.

Through optimized process design, equipment upgrades and tailored automation Agilitech was able to address the client’s specific pain points, increasing line efficiencies and reducing unnecessary manual labor. For example, automated palletizing reduced labor and OSHA incidents, while increasing throughput.
Agilitech worked with the client to develop several levels of automation, and generated capex budgets to support each variation. This allowed the client to select the best fit for their current and future operational requirements.

A local food company with whom Agilitech had a long-term business relationship was awarded a new contract that required the following: the installation of a second cup line; upgrades to address the room conditions required for the new cup line; and increased capacity for the exsiting cup line, kitchen batching, and recipe implementation.

The Agilitech Food and Beverage team worked closely with the client to generate a complete design that included process flow and equipment selection, meeting sanitation requirements, and maintaining product quality. Our process design team developed the process flow for recipe and batching, selected instruments and equipment, generated HMI screens, and delivered product to the filling line.

The packaging design included the aseptic cup filling, lot and date coding, as well as feed conveyors to transfer the cups into and out of a spiral cooler, and finally into a wraparound sleever and casepacking system.

Our automation team programmed the recipe batches, integrated the CIP process, and built several control panels to tie the entire line into a complete automated system. We then managed the OEM vendors as well as provided PM and CM support throughout the duration of the project.

Agilitech upgraded their equipment and systems, and optimized their complete process for quality, efficiency, and safety. Agilitech continued to work with the client to upgrade their packaging room to a more food-safe environment, improve their CIP system capacity, and increase their pack line efficiency.