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Costco Wholesale Corporation utilizes Thermo Electron's Autocheck 9000plus checkweigher to streamline meat packing plant operations
Costco Wholesale Industries, a division of the Costco Wholesale Corporation, operates manufacturing businesses, including special food packaging, optical laboratories, meat processing and jewelry distribution. These businesses, as with Costco Wholesale warehouses, have a goal of providing members with the highest caliber products at the lowest prices. Costco's meat processing facilities in particular have a tradition of offering quality ground beef product at a bulk rate. In order to uphold its reputation, Costco is constantly looking for ways to improve productivity and quality safely and effectively, allowing for a tighter operation and decreased overhead.
It is this pursuit of improved internal operations and product yield that led Costco's Tracy, California based meat packaging plant to seek a more efficient way to package its ground beef product. The 80,000 square foot facility was packaging its hamburgers by sealing penny pack bags with aluminum clips. Packaging using aluminum clips posed several problems. First, there was physical strain on the employees along the conveyer line as they worked to keep pace with the rate of production. Applying aluminum clips to each bag was ergonomically unfriendly. Also, it was becoming more difficult to consistently increase productivity. In addition to those problems, the bags were not consumer friendly with aluminum clips. The average consumer would cut the clip and tail off the bag when initially opening, thus leaving a bag with little to no plastic left to reseal it with, compromising product freshness and life. The plant felt that switching to a twist tie and hot air sealed bag would solve their production and consumer problems.
"We felt that the initial clipping process was putting more of strain on our people than we were willing to live with," said Liam Nestler, Plant Manager. "In addition, we try to supply our customers with the best product available and felt that the aluminum tie forced the user to cut the end of the bag, limiting product life and freshness," continued Neslter.
While the twist tier was a more consumer friendly solution, Costco anticipated they would need to...