Many of you probably went to the Nor-Fishing exhibition in Trondheim in August, where you would have seen the latest fish processing machines and equipment for use on board factory trawlers and other fishing vessels.
The trends in processing fish at sea are following, if not matching, those on land where the use of computerised systems is enhancing the efficiency of basic operations.
In a land-based processing plant, gone, or going, are the days when whole fish were unceremoniously dumped at one end of the production unit, and skinless, boneless fillets or fillet portions were collected for freezing and/or packing at the other.
Undoubtedly the quality of the final products would have been checked at that stage, and probably quality checks would have been made at certain points along the line.
Now, however, in a modern factory in most countries of the world, the operations at each and every stage of the processing line from the initial weighing of whole fish entering the plant are carefully monitored. Yields are calculated and recorded right down to the individual worker where tasks such as trimming are carried out by hand.
At any time the line is running, the plant’s management can call up on a screen, often in a remote location, an exact picture of how the line is performing and can identify any shortcomings or problems as they occur and take remedial action.
In the summer, Marel, part of the giant Icelandic/Danish processing equipment group Marel Food Systems was reportedly trying to promote a shipboard version of the flowlines it has developed for processing on land.
The company has developed filleting and trimming flowlines that track yield and quality from every worker and thus, it claims, improve overall plant performance.
The benefits from installing this equipment are impressive, according to Marel. It claims that its flowlines lower costs, increase efficiency, reduce wastage, improve utilisation of higher-priced items, guarantee 100% traceability, enhance ergonomic configurations, maximise quality control and provide plant managers with real-time data feedback of entire fish processing operations.
Data are collected by Marel’s Window’s based MPS software which monitors the entire production process, including individual and overall throughput, yield, capacity and quality. This allows production managers to take immediate action when problems occur, according to the company.
At work stations individual statistics are collected – worker name, speed, quality, utilisation, product types, working time, etc – and products are weighed as they exit. Where appropriate, workers will be paid according to performance and here yield is just as important, if not more so, than speed.
Random quality control sampling monitors defects and stations with a higher occurrence of problems can have their sampling frequency increased. Workers not performing satisfactorily can be re-trained or moved to another job.
In addition to providing in-depth, real-time performance measurement, all registrations are stored in the database, which can be retrieved in report form according to managerial need.
Other equipment manufacturers, in addition to Marel, are pursuing these objectives which can only benefit the seafood processing sector as it endeavours to make the most of its basic raw material.
