National Cranberry Cooperative

National Cranberry Cooperative

Capacity

After addressing the scheduling and staffing issues on the receiving end we evaluated what was nessesary to efficiently unload all the cranberries at peak time. The estimated number of berries for 1971 is 16,355 barrels during September through November with the peak a maximum is 19,000 barrels. To accomidate the peek NCC will need to convert two holding tanks from dry only to wet. This would give NCC a 3,500 barrell holding capacity on dry berries. Dry unloading capacity is more than sufficient as NCC needs only to turn the dry holding tanks 1.4 times during max capacity. With the maximum throughput of 4,900 barrels, the destining and dechaffing operation can handle this in a little over one hour a each. The bottleneck is wet production. By converting the two tanks it will give NCC 3,700 barrel capacity at any onetime on the wet berries. Based on 13,300 wet berries (capacity), NCC will need to turn over the tanks 3.1 times in the 11 hour receiving period to eliminate hold-ups. Using the new receiving schedule, minimum shipment quantities and drying capacity, which will be discussed next, this area is no longer a bottle neck.

The second part of the equation nessesary to make the receiving department run smoothly is drying capacity for wet berries. Scheduling and holding capacities will not work if we cannot dry the berries. By adding two additional driers, NCC will be able to dry 1,000 barrels per hour of wet berries. If all 13 holding bins are full, it will take 3.7 hours to dry the 3,700 barrels they are holding. As each bin is