Henwil Chickens process analysis: the impact of a carton freezer on the production capacity of the abattoir

Abstract

Henwil Chickens is a chicken abattoir in Lichtenburg Northwest province. The production line slaughters 60000 chickens per day in one 10-hour shift. Henwil wish to implement a second shift, which will run through the night and will allow them to double daily production. However the current production line at the abattoir is not capable of handling a second shift mainly due to a constraint in the blast freezing section. The current blast freezer configuration used at Henwil needs to run through the night in order to complete the freezing of products from the day’s production. For this reason Henwil have decided to install a carton freezer which is capable of freezing enough products to allow them to implement a second shift which will run through the night and ultimately double production. This study includes three major phases. The first phase was process mapping including all details of the process, data collection and topic research with reference to different simulation software packages. The second phase was composed of data analysis and simulation model construction representing the Henwil abattoir process in order to gain a holistic view of how the process runs and how it is affected by the proposed changes in the system. Finally the simulation model needed to be validated and findings documented including results and conclusions. The project seeks to advise Henwil on the impact that implementing a carton freezer will have on the current process and its resources and once it has been implemented how best to use the resources available to them in order to achieve optimum production from the line.