Introduction Of Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd was established in the date of 23th August 1980 commenced manufacturing and retailing fishery business at a small village at Hutan Melintang, Perak Malaysia. The main priority of Wan Kee Fishery is to understand and satisfy the basic need of the customers on fish meal consumption in order maintaining daily supply of fish to customer. With its efficient production and competitive price, Wan Kee Fishery is able to compete with other fishery firms and extending their product line

Wan Kee Fishery was started their business as a fish retailer in 1980 and then diversified their product into dried fish and fish meal. They are providing different kinds of fish products to satisfy the customer need and increasing the company profit. Therefore, Wan Kee Fishery is using competitive strategy of differentiation. The sources of differentiation will become their competitive advantage when they compete with other competitor.

With the years of experience, Wan Kee Fishery is now become the well-liked among top market leader in fish industry in Malaysia. They used growth strategy to expand their target market in Malaysia and expand their market share by exploring other state in Malaysia such as Sabah. They insist and persist on superb product quality, innovative design and exceptional value for the customer. The director of this organization said that their philosophy is to ensure the freshness of the product. In addition, their objective is to ensure authentic and meaningful experience to consumers hungry for trusted information on the authenticity, quality and sustainability of their products.

Besides, Wan Kee Fishery also has some principal activities. First, the fishermen catch the fish and send the gains back to the fisheries as soon as possible while the fishes are alive. Second, the clerk will label the fishes with the details of weight, size, and categorize the different type and size of fishes into different barrels. Next, they will distribute their products according to the demand of the customers. Beside of sending live fish to demand customers, they also process and manufacture the small fish into other products such as Dried Anchovies or canned food.

Based on the company is the one which fishing, producing, processing, packaging and selling by its own and not rely on others retailers or manufacturers, so the price of products is lower in the industry. The reason of this organization can provide low price products because they are not incur any others cost in their products operation process.

Besides, customer services are very important in the area of doing business in Wan Kee Fishery. They are providing best service for customer no matter in quality of fish meal or safety of consuming the product. They are continuing improving their service to enhance their operating system and activities.

2.0 Production process and facility layout of Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd

2.1.1 Description on Production Process of Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd

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The fish used for meal production may divided into three categories, which are fish caught for the sale purpose of fishmeal production, fish by catches and fish off cuts and offals from the consumption indutry. Most fish species may be converted into fishmeal and oil. The main composition of some species which commonly used for fish meal production are Anchoveta, Herring, Mackarel and Pilchard.

Meanwhile, handling of raw material is very imperative step in preserving freshness. Cooling and icing of raw material will normally decelerator the biological decomposition. The salt content in the raw material will be increasing by handling of fish and fish offal with seawater and refrigerated sea water storage when going to the fish metal plants. The maximum limit for salt is 2.5%.

The simplest way of making fish meal from raw fish is to let the fish dry in the sun. This conventional method is still used in some parts of the world where processing plants are not available but the product is poor in comparison with ones made by modern methods. Almost all fish meal is made by cooking, pressing, drying and grinding the fish in machinery designed for the purpose. Although the process is simple in principle, considerable skill and experience are necessary to obtain a high yield of high quality products and to make the plant efficient. The purpose of the process is to separate the three main components of the raw material which is the solids (fat-free fry matter), oil and water.

Step1 cooking

The first step in fish meal manufacturing is cooking. Much of the water and oil runs off, or can be removed by pressing when the fish are cooked and the protein is coagulated whereas raw fish lose very little liquor even under very high mechanical pressure.

A commercial cooker consists essentially of a long steam jacketed cylinder through which the fish are moved by a screw conveyor. Some cookers also have the facility for injecting steam into the cooking material. The cooking operation is critical; if the fish are partly cooked, the liquor cannot be pressed out satisfactorily, and if overcooked the material becomes too soft for pressing. No drying occurs during the cooking stage.

Until fairly recently, the general view has been that the best consequences would be obtained at the highest possible temperatures, which would be 100 Celsius at atmosphere pressure. Heating, which coagulates the protein, ruptures the fat depots and liberates oil and water. New experiments have show n that the walls of the fat cells are wrecked before the temperature reaches 50 Celsius. Another important recent observation is that coagulation of the fish material is completed at much lower temperatures than 100 Celsius is depending on the PH level and ionic concentrations. The most common practice for cooking raw material is to heat to 95 until 100 Celsius within 15-20 minutes.

Step 2 pressing

The dominant type of press used in the fish meal industry is the double or twin screw press. The performance of the press is mainly determined by the profile and the compression ratio of the screws. The twin screw press should be able to produce press cakes with moisture contents somewhat below 50%. In this stage of the process removes some of the oil and water. The fish are conveyed through a perforated tube whilst being subjected to swelling pressure, in general by means of a tapered shaft on the screw conveyor. A assortment of water and oil is squeezed out through the perforations and the solid, recognized as press cake, emerges from the end of the press. During the pressing process the water content may be reduced from about 70 per cent to about 50 per cent, and the oil content abridged to about 4 per cent.

Step 3 press liquor

The separation of three fractions of press liquid coming from the press and pre-strainer which is consists of sludge, oil and water which based on their different specific gravities. After screening to remove coarse pieces of solid material, the liquor from the presses is continuously centrifuged to remove the oil. The oil is sometimes further refined in a final centrifuge, a process known as polishing, before being pumped to storage tanks. The refined oil is valuable and is used in the manufacture of edible oils and fats, for example margarine.

The water portion of the liquor, known as stick water, contains dissolved material and fine solids in suspension which may amount to about 9 per cent by weight. The solids are mostly protein and stick water can contain as much as 20 per cent of the total solids in the fish so that it is normally well worth recovering. The material is recovered by evaporating the stickwater to thick syrup containing 30-50 per cent solids, and sometimes marketed separately and known as condensed fish solubles. More usually however the concentrated product is added back to the press cake and dried along with it to make what is known as whole meal.

Step 4 Evaporation

Evaporation of stick water is a relatively new process in the fish meal industry. Evaporators did not become standard equipment until the late 1970s. This is done in the fish meal plants by the evaporation system where the press liquid is separated from the lipids and concentrated from 6% dry matter to about 30% dry matter.

Step 5 drying

Although basically a simple operation, considerable skill is required to get the drying conditions just right. If the meal is underdried, moulds or bacteria may be able to grow; if it is overdried, scorching may occur and the nutritional value of the meal will be reduced.

There are two main types of dryer, direct and indirect. In the direct dryer very hot air at a temperature of up to 500°C is passed over the material as it is tumbled rapidly in a cylindrical drum; this is the quicker method, but heat damage is much more likely if the process is not carefully controlled. The meal does not reach the temperature of the hot air, because rapid evaporation of water from the surface of each particle of fish causes cooling; normally the product temperature remains at about 100°C.

The most usual type of indirect dryer consists either of a steam jacketed cylinder or a cylinder containing steam heated discs which also tumble the meal. Much of the unpleasant odour from fish meal plants originates from the dryers; indirect dryers, which are normally used in the UK, cause less nuisance because they use less air.

Step 6 grinding and bagging

The final operations are grinding to break down any lumps and particles of bone, and packing the meal into bags or storing it in silos for bulk delivery. From the fish meal factory the meal is transported to the animal food compounder, and from there to the farm.

Step 7 milling and storage

The ideal in milling is to produce small particles averaging around 40 mesh Tyler screen and of as even a size as possible. In practice there is a great variation in particle sizes ranging from 10 mesh to over 100 mesh. Most specifications require the fish meal to pass through a 10 mesh screen, otherwise it is too coarse for feed mixes. Production of excessive fine particles must be avoided for several reasons. They cause dusting when handled, sift through woven bags resulting in loss and in pollution and cause compacting of bulk meal Antioxidants are applied immediately after manufacture to prevent oxidation

2.1.2 Strengths and weaknesses of Production process

Strength

Pressing has the purpose of squeezing out as much liquid from solid fish pulp. This is important not only to improve the oil yield and the quality of the meal, but also to reduce the moisture content of the press cake as far as possible, thereby reducing the fuel consumption of the dryers and increasing their capacity.

Weakness

The proof of a good cooking is good pressability of the mass, which leads to proper removal of press liquid and, in particular for fatty fish species, efficient recovery of oil, producing a meal with a low fat content which is one of the criterion of quality

The weakness in cooking process occasionally takes places when the cooking operation is under three conditions which has occurred when the liquor cannot be pressed out satisfactorily or the possibility when the fish are incompletely cooked in cooking operation and on the contrary if the material is overcooked the material becomes too soft for pressing.

2.2.1 Facility layout and description

Facility layout is defined as the most effective physical arrangements of the facilities of a plant and its various parts in order to achieve the best co-ordination and efficiency in the usage of man power, machines, and materials resulting in the cost effectiveness and smoothest in production activities. The objective of layout strategy is to develop a cost-effective layout that will meet a firm’s competitive needs.

In Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd., they choose the product oriented layout as their layout strategy. Product oriented layout is defined as the facility layout is organized around products or families of similar high-volume, low-variety products. There are two different types of strategy in product-oriented layout, fabrication line and assembly line. Fabrication line builds components on a series of machines which involved in repetitive processes. Besides, fabrication is focus on machine-paced process and it is balanced by physical redesign. In contrary, assembly line puts fabricated parts together at a series of workstation. Furthermore, assembly line is paced by work tasks and it is balanced by moving tasks. Hence, in Wan Kee Fishery, they are emphasized and balanced on both types of line to control the time of task performing at each station is the same.

2.2.2 Layout Plant of Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd

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Iteration Machine (J) Hammer Mill

Feeding Machine (K) Scales

Indirect Steam Cooker (L) Scrubber

Strainer Conveyor (N) Decanter

Twin Screw Press (O), (R), (V) Buffer Tank

Tearing Machine (P) Stickwater Centrifuge

Direct Flame Dryer (S) Oil Separator

Vibrating Screen (U) Multi-effect evaporator

From the layout plant that used in Wan Kee Fishery, we can see that there are about eighteen machines implemented in their operations process. First of all, large fish are hashed through the iteration machine, while smaller fish (for example, those less than 40 cm long) are fed directly at a constant rate by the feeding machine to the indirect steam cooker. The coagulated mass is pre-strained in a strainer conveyor, before entering the twin screw press. The products from the press (such as presscake and press liquor) are treated as follows. The presscake is disintegrated in the tearing machine to facilitate mixing with stickwater concentrate and drying in an indirect steam dryer or a direct flame dryer.

The meal passes through vibrating screen to eradicate superfluous matter like pieces of wood and metal before entering the hammer mill. The ground mill is robotically weight out in bags by the scales for the purpose the bags is closed. On the other hand, the meals can be stored in a holding and blending silo before bagging, or storing in bulk.

In order to remove the sludge, the press liquor must pass through decanter. Before separation into oil, stick water and fine sludge in the stick water centrifuge, the press liquor then passes through a buffer tank.

The oil must be passes through a buffer tank before water and sludge which added to press cake impurities are removed into oil separator. After polishing, the oil often passes through a buffer tank before storage in the oil tank. The stick water passes through a buffer tank before concentration in a multi effect evaporator. The concentrate is mixed thoroughly with decanter-sludge and press cake before drying, after the buffer tank.

2.2.3 Advantage and Disadvantage of Product-Oriented Layout

The advantage of using product oriented layout in Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bnd is able to lower the material handling costs as the facilities are arrange in sequences. Furthermore, the factory incurs low variable costs as they produce higher volume of products with lower variety. By applying this layout, Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd is able to generate higher rate of output in a shorter time. Due to the processes in Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd are repetitive and routine task oriented, so it require low-skilled labour. As a result, it does not need provide training and also easy supervision.

Besides, the product-oriented layout works can increase the performance of production because machines or equipments that produce one product are group together. So, it will be reducing the flow times of machines or equipments from one place to another because placement of the machines or equipments is in sequence. In other words, the rooms are next to each other easier for the workers to carry on the production process. And yet it is a repetitive process so workers can reduce the possibility in making the mistake. This is not only enhancing the efficiency but effectiveness of the production process. When there is an efficiency and effectiveness of the production process, the performance tend to increase.

In addition, by using product-oriented layout also have its own disadvantages which are when there is a machine break down or a work stoppage, the whole operation is unable to continue. Then, the factory will face loses due to the products are not produce on time. In addition, it also lack of flexibility in product or production rates. If there are any changes in product design or system, the layout is not able or not flexible in respond to those changes.

3.0 Study area’s literature review and contribution

3.1 Literature Review

3.1.1 What is Product Recovery Management?

Product recovery management (PRM) encompass the management of all used and discarded products, components, and materials that fall under the responsibility of a manufacturing company (Thierry, Salomon, Van Nunen, Van Wassenhove, 1995). Broadly consistent with product recovery liteaure, practitioners discuss recoverable assets in three broad classes of process outputs, which are the whole product, designed parts, and constituent materials (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)).

3.1.2 The objectives of Product Recovery Management

The objective of product recovery management is to recover as much of the economic and ecological value as reasonably possible, thus eliminating the ultimate quantities of waste (Martijn Thierry, Marc Salomon, Jo Van Nunen, & Luk Van Wassenhove (1995)).

3.1.3 Product Recovery Drivers

The decision to recover equipment is driven by several different factors. Here, are the product recovery drivers according to the industry which is as follow: (G. Ferrer (n.d.)

Product recovery as a manufacturing strategy factor

Product recovery in the replacement economics

Product recovery as a maintenance policy

Product recovery as an environment protection policy

Furthermore, the remanufactured machine and product also can retain its identity in product recovery and have a close relationship with clients for achieving successful remanufacturing.

3.1.4 Product Recovery Options

There are several options includes in product recovery management which is remanufacturing, recycling, repairing, and refurbishing. Therefore, the product recovery management becomes the important part for the preservation of the environment and environmental sustainability but also to the profitability of the companies (Uzmez, Barlas, & Aras, 2011).

In addition, each of the product recovery options involves collection of used products components, reprocessing, and redistribution. So that, the main difference between the options is in processing. As a result, repairing, refurbishing and remanufacturing will upgrade the used products in quality and the repairing involves the least, whereas the remanufacturing keeps increasing (Martijin Thierry, Marc Salomon, Jo Van Nunen , & Luk Van Wassenhove (1995).

First, the purpose of product repair is to make the used products become working order or replacement of broken parts. Normally, there is only limited product disassembly and reassembly in product repair recovery. As a result, it caused that the quality of repaired products is less than the quality of new products. Other than that, the products repair operations just only can perform at the customer’s location or at manufacturer-controlled repair centers. For example, the durable product repairs products can be machinery, automobile are also can engaged in product repair (Martijin Thierry, Marc Salomon, Jo Van Nunen , & Luk Van Wassenhove (1995).

Secondly, refurbishing also involved in the product recovery options. The achievement of using refurbishing is to bring used products up to specified quality and working order at the time it is returned. The quality standards are less stringent than those for new products, while outdated parts and modules may be upgraded. In addition, this shows that the output of the original product is an updated version (Visich, John K, Li Suhong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007).

Thirdly, in remanufacturing products which have all critical components and modules replaced with current technology and the output of new products. Besides, the goal of remanufacturing is to bring used products up to quality standards. Apart from this, the remanufacturing has its benefits in increase the green image and the demand of the product. As a result, this show that when the product is designed for disassembly and remanufacturing, economic and environmental savings are increased more compared with the products which are not designed for disassembly and remanufacturing. Thus, remanufacturing also have some disadvantages which is that the total cost increased because of the starting interest on remanufacturing capacity increased (Beril Uzmez, Necati Aras, & Yaman Barlas (2011).

Lastly, the goal of the previous product recovery options is to retain the identity and functionality of used products and their components as much as possible. However, products that are in recycled can help in reduced to the material level and cleaned it if necessary. Normally, high quality materials can used to make original parts, while lower grades are used to make items that do not need to meet a high standard product. In additional, recycling also have its own benefits which is it can reuse materials from used products and components. As a result, it can help in reduce ecological disturbances from raw materials mining (Martijin Thierry, Marc Salomon, Jo Van Nunen , & Luk Van Wassenhove (1995)).

3.1.5 Disadvantages of Product Recovery System

The main disadvantage of product recovery is energy-intensive. Generally, recovering products and product assets requires energy, but inattention to the amount or kind of energy used can erode potential environmental savings from recovery (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)). When computing the centralized or decentralized locations of processing facilities within a recovery network, optimization algorithms include the transportation costs as a program constraint but may overlook environmental costs, which are externalized from market prices for vehicle fuels. In comparison to collection and transportation, disassembly and reprocessing activities are likely to have less substantial energy impacts but may still rely heavily on unsustainable fossil fuels. More energy efficient and green energy solutions will be needed to mitigate their energy and atmospheric impacts as well (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)).

In addition, remanufacturing and recycling do not promote responsible consumption (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)). For instance, product recovery does not discourage the overwhelming propensity to discard goods after extremely short life cycles. (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)).

3.1.6 Advantages of Product Recovery System

The advantage of product recovery management is it able to help companies to prioritize and develop reverse manufacturing facilities accordingly, leading to a comprehensive reduction in overall cost (S.Wadhwa, Jitendra Madaan, & Mudit Verma (2009)). Beside of this, reusing parts and recycling materials can directly diminish ecological disturbances from raw material mining and from waste interment and combustion (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)). Furthermore, more penetrating disposition of electronic products through recovery can also distract heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, and mercury, away from landfills, or incinerators and, thereby, prevent their leaching into the groundwater or dispersion into the air (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)). Lastly, product recovery is creating learning opportunities to improve the environmental benignity of products (Charles David White, Eric Masanet, Christine Meisner Rosen, & Sara L. Beckman (2003)).

3.1.7 Enhancing Product Recovery Value with RFID

Radio frequency identification (RFID) can be used to identify products as item level, can be read with no requirement for line of sight and can operated in harsh environments, where dirt, dust and moisture conditions can affect other types of Automatic Data Capture Systems, such as bar codes and light-emitting devices. All RFID systems are comprised of three main components which are the RFID tag, or transponder, which is located on the object to be identified and is die data carrier in the RFID system; the RFID reader, or transceiver, which may be able to both read data from and write data to a transponder; and the back-end database which associates records with data collected by readers (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)).

There are many potential benefits of implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in supply chain. First of all, RFID can be used to trace the movement of items through the supply chain in real-time. This will lead to increase the visibility of inventory and assets in the supply chain and procure better management of inventory and logistics (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)). Second of all, RFID also improves the safety and security of the supply chain through improved track and trace, more efficient recall management, better expiration date management and reductions in shrinkage (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)). Hence, the company does not worry about the problem of disclosure of information to other parties and a higher level of analysis can be done to guide the management. Apart from this, RFID technology also enhances value recovery (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)). In addition, RFID can accurately identify the point of sale and the specific model of product when the products are returned from the consumers (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)). It makes the supply chain much easier to get the data and information of the returned product in short period. Lastly, RFID tags could also contain valuable information, which can be used to estimate the quality level of the return (Visich, John K, Li, Suchong, Khumawala, & Basheer M (2007)).

3.2 Contribution of Product Recovery Management towards the company

Based on the articles that we have read through which in the area of product recovery management, the studies show that product recovery management severely affected the affluent of the operations process and management in an organization. By implementing the product recovery system with appropriate ways, it will bring in many benefits towards the organization.

There could be few product recovery drivers that influence our company, Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd in the operation process. First of all, product recovery as a manufacturing strategy factor play an important role to ensure the process must be cost-effective and the final quality of the product must be good as the new product. The reason that our company choosing remanufacturing as manufacturing strategy because our production is involved in high volume, therefore there will be a sustainable competitive advantage and earn a sufficiently high profitability. For instance, our company executes the remanufacturing strategy to process stale anchovies into the canned products such as sauce, sambal, or fried anchovies as snack.

In addition, product recovery helps our company to success in the replacement economics by repairing the assemble parts or upgrading the equipment to the latest technology rather than purchase a new machine. This helps us to save cost and avoid high investment in purchasing new machines. Apart from this, our company also save the time and reduce cost for training the workers on the new machines.

Nevertheless, product recovery is important as a maintenance policy to extend the useful life of equipment. Used products are completely assembled and all modules and parts are extensively inspected. Worn-out or outdated parts and modules are replaced with new ones. Remanufacturing can be combined with technological upgrading. The main purpose of remanufacturing are improving equipment performance, reducing the lag of the most recent developments in the industry, and meeting the new regulations on safety level or environment protection, and meeting regulations of products renewal. For instance, our company will change the different width, size and speed of the cutting machines to produce different size of anchovies to fulfill the consumers’ demand.

Lastly, the company involved in the process of recycle stale anchovy into powder, compound foods for poultry, pigs and farmed fish, which known as fish meal. The fish meal is far too valuable to be used as a fertilizer too. This recycle process is important to the company to eliminate the volume of waste of materials or products and creates more opportunities in its business. As a result, it can help in reduce ecological disturbances from raw materials mining and solve the waste problem.

4.1 Discussion

Through the visit to the Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd, we identified the product-oriented layout and the practice of Product Recovery Management systems is in place for a long time.

They have high demand on their products, where they applied the appropriate layout with sufficient workers. This not only enables them to meet the demand from consumers, sales are very promising too. Also, no doubt the company realizes the importance of the product recovery system can bring efficiency to the company, so does profitability. Their two recovered products: Condensed fish soluble, and remanufactured staled products, is providing them efficiency and utility of the raw material itself. From condensed fish soluble to say, it is actually an extension of their manufacture line, which open up another business opportunity while continue excel in their main products. As for remanufactured staled products, it is a flexible line of production which able to absorb the losses due to weather changes that causes the fish to stale. This line of production in fact will help the company to save up a lot of costs, not to mention the costly procedure on disposing bad material.

Although we were able to done the study within the factory, but still, this study is rather impractical. This is because, different product line consists of different matter only the operators known, such as specific technique or method on handling certain material. With multiple product lines exist within the factory, there were just too little time for us to study deep into the subject, where details were left out due to time constraint. Without that specific knowledge, our analysis will lack of support to produce a solid inference, because some important factors might be missing. So, to further this study, a longer period is needed, to spend more days on more extensive observation.

4.2 Conclusion

In conclusion, product recovery management has been great with Wan Kee Fishery Sdn Bhd. Their efficiency reaches a very satisfying level together with the appropriate product-oriented layout. But they should beware of the production line too, as a simple breakdown would stop the whole operation, they need solution quick. While we would recommend that they diverse their production line to multiple self-sustainable segments to prevent such interruption occurs that might cause huge losses. Lastly, this study has shown efficiency does not merely come from the layout itself, and it may be the trouble maker as well.