Boosting Water Efficiency at a Poultry Processor

By bringing poultry production in house via a new, modern facility, a large food processor that sells over 89 million rotisserie chickens per year expects to save up to 35 cents per bird. Real-time water management from Apana helps make that a reality by driving operational efficiencies at the processor’s feed mill, hatchery, and process plant.

Chicken has been a critical strategic loss leader for the food processor’s parent company. Cost pressures and supply challenges tested the ability to keep retail prices low. Vertically integrating chicken production would give the company control over its supply chain and enable the necessary operational efficiencies to keep costs down.  

A key indicator of operational efficiency in large scale production facilities is water use. Complex operations, like industrial chicken plants, can use millions of gallons of water daily. Striving for operational excellence across diverse and complex processes is a continuous challenge.  

The food processing division, working closely with Apana, identified four key process areas to monitor and measure water use: the feed mill, hatchery, and process plant, including process plant offices.

Key processes were further divided with sub-metering to better understand water use within  these areas. A total of more than 20 functional areas of the complex are being monitored currently. Typically, Water Efficiency as a Service^™ is implemented into existing facilities, but in this case, water meters were specified in the site plan and installed as the building was constructed. 

The solution uses commercially available water meters that support either Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) or Pulse outputs. The Apana Internet of Things (IoT) network of radio transmitters send data every minute to Gateways placed strategically in the complex. The Gateways then upload the data to Apana’s cloud-based analytics engine over a secure cellular VPN link.

Analytics are applied to the real time water data to alert the customer to issues with the process, equipment health or non-standard water use. Operators can use this data to continue to optimize production processes and equipment reliability, as well as to coach and mentor operators to use best practices.

Measuring Water

Water data is collected from four main areas across the operation:

Plant operations, maintenance and environmental compliance operators and managers gain new insight into their equipment, processes and practices with real-time water data and alerting. Manual monitoring of water use, equipment health and checking for leaks is now a thing of the past. One person with a tablet can instantly validate, from anywhere, changes to water use or equipment health in real-time.

Process Plant: Total Water Use

An alert was triggered when the 25% water use threshold for the boiler room was exceeded.

Using real time analytics, the problem was isolated to one of the low pressure hot water loops. A 20,000 gallon daily waste event was identified and repaired. This made it possible to bring the third production line online, allowing the plant to meet daily production goals. 

Boiler Room: Daily Water Use

The daily view shows water use spiking on January 13.

Thanks to simple, actionable insight from real-time data analytics, this food processor continues to identify and repair mechanical issues and operational waste to reduce their total cost of water.

Process Plant: Total Water Use

An alert was triggered when the 25% water use threshold for the boiler room was exceeded.

Boiler Room: Daily Water Use

The daily view shows water use spiking on January 13.

Boiler Room: Hourly Water Use on 1/13

The hourly view shows a baseline water increase across the entire facility at 10 AM.