Chapter I - Introduction

Chapter I Introduction

Technology nowadays has progressed so far that it has already changed majority
of the standards of operation on food processing based from the past. From simple
processing and storage of food, science and development recently took the stand of
requiring all food manufacturing plants today to have their own cold storage in order to
preserve the freshness and quality of their products. These developments may have
phased out most traditional ways of processing and storage of food which todays
generation might have forgotten about; but these transitions have proven that they are
all worth the change.

As described (FAO, 1991), a cold store for meat is a specialized store designed
and equipped to store a single product which can be in different forms (carcasses, cuts,
deboned) and/or be at different levels of cold (chilled, frozen). These specialized stores
are complementary to a slaughterhouse and perhaps to a freezing facility, and are part
of any stage in the distribution process that constitutes the cold chain of processing
meat. Thus, this cold storage design adopts the complementing idea of incorporating a
cold storage design to the immediate product of the slaughtering process as well as with
the finished product of the meat processing.

Production cold store is actually a part of the slaughterhouse. Its main function is
to ensure that there would be sufficient supply of raw material in the buffer stock, as well
as with the supply of the finished product ready for delivery. Many companies look at
their own demand fluctuations and assume that there is not enough consistency to
predict future variability. Thus, a safety stock inventory is always considered a term
used to describe a level of extra stock that is maintained to mitigate risk of stockouts or
(shortfall in raw material or finished goods) due to uncertainties in supply and demand.

With these in mind, the designers are now ready to develop all the necessary
parameters needed in the design of the cold store for a pork processing plant with live
hogs as its raw material and deboned pork cuts as its finished product to be supplied to
other manufacturing plant for further processing.