Susanne Klose, senior director of research and development for Church Brothers, LLC BB #:161800 based in Salinas, CA, joined the company about a year ago.
Soon after starting, she implemented a technology system from Inteligistics, whom she’d worked with for years at other companies, to improve vegetable product cooling efficiency.
She quickly began to see the benefits.
“With the implementation of InteliCool, we improved cooling efficiencies by 15-30 percent and transferred the vacuum cooling process from a static data and operator experience to a dynamic data-driven decision-making process,” she said.
Inteligistics’ InteliCool is designed to create a smarter cooling process for both tunnel and vacuum tube cooling. It is a software system with probes and hubs that works with off-the-shelf hardware components, within a company’s existing cooling system. It digitizes the data and ties into the system and can adjust automatically during the cooling process.
Klose said the system adds value in several ways.
Because it allows operators to see temperatures in real-time on a smartphone or tablet, it allows each load to be custom cooled, which saves energy, as cooler product doesn’t have to be cooled as much as warmer product.
She said many operators have become wary of freezing a load, so their tendency was to not cool a load enough.
“So, it improves quality and shelf-life but also saves energy by cooling each load to its needs,” Klose said.
Rao Mandava, chairman and president of Inteligistics, said that during his work with Klose and Church Brothers, the company found that there were times that loads would be backed up, especially in middle of the day, and it would delay the product getting cooled properly.
“When they went to our system, the reduction of cycle time flattened their amount of backups and waiting,” Mandava said.
He said he was gratified to see quantifiable savings for Church Brothers using Inteligistics technology, and he has proposed using more of its technology to cover from receiving point to shipping point.
“This would digitize the supply chain for them,” Mandava said.
Klose said she has been a long-time proponent of using more technology and digital processes, but it hasn’t always been possible.
“Technology is highly important, but it never made it in the field because of the work involved,” she said.
Mandava said that’s changing now, and he wants Inteligistics to be one of the companies to transform the produce industry into a digital industry.
Showing up to 30 percent energy savings for a company like Church Brothers is a big step in convincing companies that an investment in technology will show a return on investment, he said.
