Implementing control charts within a meat processing plant

This paper presents a review of a quality improvement project within a meat processing plant. The manufacturing process converts ground meat into cooked patties through a multi-step process. The goal of the project was to reduce the variability in the cooked (finished) meat patty weight. An engineering analysis indicated that the ground meat temperature was a key contributor to the variability in the final weight of the patty. Initial efforts to implement a control chart failed due to the presence of autocorrelation in the data. Advanced control charting techniques were successfully applied to the data.