Introduction

摘要

Infant Nutrition manufacturing is a complicated process with recipes incorporating dozens of ingredients, some of which can be very small in volume.  The handling, weighing and conveying of these smaller additions are error-sensitive operations and can be very labour intensive.

婴幼儿营养品由于富含多种配方导致生产过程十分复杂，有些还包含一些微小料。处理、称量、传送这些小料非常容易产生误差并需要密集劳力。

This article looks at the benefits of pre-mixing to overcome these issues, provide greater efficiency and reduce the risk of errors.

此文将解析如果通过预混来解决这些问题，让生产更加高效并降低误差风险。

What do we mean by ‘pre-mixing’?

“预混”的含义是什么？

Pre-mixing is primarily done for reasons of Efficiency. Rather than individually weighing out the minor and micro ingredients for each batch run, pre-mixing involves grouping these into larger quantities, blending them, then dosing out the right quantity of this mix to add to each batch run. This saves on the number of weighments to be made.

预混的主要目的就是提高效率。不再需要为每个批次单独称量微料及小料，预混包括将原本的小料分成大组，再混合，接着再分配到各个批次。省去大量的称量工作。

Pre-mixing is extremely common in several sectors of B2B dry food trading.  It can be done “in-house” or provided as a service from an outside company.

预混一般被用于干制食品行业的多个领域。可以在内部完成或由外包公司提供。

How difficult is it to do?

有何难度？

Minor and micro ingredients vary considerably in volume, weight, particle size and bulk density.  There may be 10g of a dense mineral to be mixed with 10kg of light lactose.  Mixing these diverse ingredients together as a pre-mix is challenging.  Conventional horizontal ribbon mixers are limited in what level of homogeneity they can achieve. Quite often it is necessary to use more sophisticated and modern mixing techniques such as plough shear, fluidised bed or vertical ribbon mixers.

微料及小料在体积、重量、颗粒大小及体积密度上差异巨大。可能是十克的高密度矿物质与十公斤低密度乳糖混合。用预混来混合这些完全不同的粉料是很有难度的。传统的水平螺条混合机是很难将这样的粉料混合均匀的。通常要使用更加精密且先进的混合技术如犁刀、流化床或者垂直螺条混合机。

After mixing comes the even greater challenge: How to empty the mixer without risking segregation? How to transfer the perfect pre-mix in the exact correct quantity? How to create efficient handling in a central pre-mix area if several big production lines are running different recipes? 

混合后面临更大的挑战：如何避免粉料转运时分层？如何达到精准输送？如何建立高效的中央预混区域配合若干大型生产线运行不同的配方？

To date there has been no reassuring answer to all of these questions.  Manufacturers cannot take any process risks so they have to continue running at lower efficiency and rely upon man-power to weigh all the ingredients individually, each and every time, for each batch run.

长久以来都缺乏完美的解决方案。制造商不愿承担任何工艺风险，宁可降低效率依赖人力按单批次，单配料分开称量。

Loading the minors and micros one recipe at a time is not only time consuming for the operators, but stringent traceability requirements demand that every ingredient is scanned before being tipped into the mixer. This means that the mixer is standing idle during this refill time, so the OEE is severely reduced as a result. 

单次投单品种的微料和小料对操作工来说不仅消耗时间，又需要在投料到混合机前对所有原料进行扫描以便将来进行追溯。而此期间，混合机处于待机状态，设备综合效率急速降低。

Add to this downtime the need for cleaning time if many recipes changes are being made too.

一旦配方大幅更换，大量时间消耗于停机清洁之上。