Optimizing suppliers quality surveillance to obtain better raw materials

SUMMARY

A food company needed to assess the homogeneity of several batches of whey protein concentrate from five different suppliers in order to test the quality of this raw material and select the best supplier. By applying Chemometric Brain, the company got accurate, objective, and high-quality data from all the samples analyzed, which helped them choose the right supplier for this key ingredient in their production line.

CONTEXT

Choosing among different raw material suppliers is not an easy task for food companies. One of our customers implemented Chemometric Brain for suppliers’ quality surveillance aiming at selecting the ones who offered the best quality.

TESTED PRODUCT

Several batches of Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC 60) from different suppliers.

ISSUE

The customer needed to monitor the homogeneity of several batches of WPC 60 provided by five different suppliers in order to test the quality of this raw material and select the best supplier.

APPROACH

To assess the homogeneity and quality of the purchased batches of WPC 60, our customer implemented Chemometric Brain to test several batches provided by five main suppliers. The spectra analyzed are shown in Figure 1.

The area of the ellipse defines the homogeneity of the product, so the larger the area, the more heterogeneous the batches are. Taking this into account, Supplier 4 (orange) stands out among the rest because of the high homogeneity of the batches provided. On the opposite, the results for Supplier 1 (green) show that these batches were the less homogeneous.

Chemometric Brain’s analysis gave us also information about the origin of the samples: the situation of the different ellipses in the plots was essential to get more details about their origin.

Ellipses representing Supplier 2 (red) and 5 (purple) are overlapped. These results might indicate that both suppliers obtain their raw materials from the same source, thus selling extremely similar WPC 60 batches. On the other hand, batches from Supplier 3 (blue) presented clear differences from those provided by Suppliers 2, 4 and 5, since its ellipse hardly overlaps the others.

Moreover, Chemometric Brain’s analysis indicated that batches from Supplier 4 had some similarities to those provided by Suppliers 2 and 5 and that the production of Supplier 1 was so heterogeneous that some of its batches cover all the variability of the others suppliers, having samples similar to each of them.

CONCLUSION

Our customer benefited from significant and detailed data on the raw materials quality and origin that helped them choose the best supplier for a key ingredient (whey protein) in their production line.

By using Chemometric Brain, food companies can monitor and audit their suppliers and base their decisions on accurate, objective, and high-quality data, ensuring the optimal choice for the company.

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