Industrial Case Studies and Projects

Iowa Industries of the Future - Food Production Industry

Project Summary
The Federal Industries of the Future (IOF) effort was initiated to boost industrial efficiency and productivity by lowering raw material and depletable energy use on a per unit of output basis. Allied efforts are focused on improving productivity and reducing generation of waste streams and pollutants. Iowa has participated in every year of the life of this program. Previous years of effort focused on first, the Iowa metal casting industry and following, new product development from Agricultural products and biomass.

Each of these projects used nationally generated visions to define issues to be used as lead in to generation of individual state "roadmaps" and "gap analysis" documents to guide future activities. Iowa's year 3 activities were initially structured to use that same successful methodology.

The third year of the Iowa Industries of the Future program focused on food processing companies in Iowa. More the 700 companies are included in this grouping and the range of activities in this sector vary from retail related services to basic processing in nearly all of the major food groups. The activities to be studied are confined to a narrow range of activity including meat products, cereal grain processors, wet corn milling, livestock feed processors and soybean processors.

Participation in the study to find ways to make strides in the effective use of energy involved companies covering over half the people employed in Iowa in this industry. The types of actions to be studied included:

A. improvements in energy efficiency,
B. productivity improvements in processing operations, and
C. reduction in waste streams. The factors to consider included both internal and external conditions that would affect operations.

The range of activities in this sector and the competitive nature of mature companies within it limit detailing specific actions taken by any one company to improve operations, but there are topics or programs which generated interest by nearly all participants. More typically, interest was guarded, or limited in scope. The areas of interest that most merit follow-on programs to support and promote include:

A. A program to explore ways to streamline the permitting process for in-plant changes to systems requiring licensing.
B. Expansion of use of college/technical interns to support programs for improvement of processes.
C. More intense individualized use of various assessment programs to aid companies in identifying and incorporating specific process, energy usage improvements.
D. On a long term basis, a program to create and support dialog between academic and research activities and the technical staff leadership within the various sectors of the food processing industry.

Follow-on activities will be needed to generate the most gain from this effort. These activities will include working with industries on the topic of assessments to enable all companies to make strides in more effective usage of energy. Interestingly, even though the companies participating in this study were from a limited range of food processing activities, the benefits judged to be of most value should be able to be applied to all food processing activities that require usage of energy.

The Iowa State University's Center for Industrial Research And Service (CIRAS) program acted as Principle Investigator for this project, with support in various capacities from partnering organization including the ISU Industrial Assessment Center, the Iowa Energy Center, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Department of Energy. The activities conducted to meet the requirements of this project also meshed on a cooperative basis with follow-on activities by other Field Specialists to create a compendium of Best Practices to guide industries in best uses for energy consuming practices and devices.

This project is divided into a series of activities specified by task articles. Actions taken to complete article requirements form the body of this report. These actions are compiled in a "findings" document that is attached as an addendum to this report. The actions taken are described in the following articles that formed the body of the Plan of Work for this activity.

In addition, these activities collaborated with associated programs to develop an effective compendium of current Best Practices aligned with productivity improvement and energy and waste reduction strategies. These activities educated those industries involved on the status of current practices, and new industries on current Best Practices aligned with productivity improvement and energy and waste reduction strategies.

The articles associated with this work are listed below, including a summary of activities, information disseminated, and successes, lessons learned and recommendations in regard to future IOF projects.

Article 5.1: (IIoF Website: www.ciras.iastate.edu/iof/)
The award-winning Iowa Industries of the Future Web site will be maintained throughout the course of the project by reviewing contents and presentation each quarter on a calendar year basis. Hard copies of changes will be provided following each review. The intent is to provide a portal for Iowa companies to access technical information regarding Iowa technology showcases, outcomes of visioning workshops and result of gap analyses will be included on the site.

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