Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Raw materials farming
Malting
Brewing
Fermentation
Conditioning
Packaging
Distribution
Consumption
Waste disposal
Figure 5.3
High-level flowchart for the production of beer.
energy, etc. And as outputs: products, waste, wages, taxes, contributions to the community,
just to mention the most important ones.
Although different mapping techniques are available, flowcharts are probably the easiest
for the purpose of understanding the process in a food-processing industry. A flowchart is a
graphic representation of the separate steps in a process placed in a sequential order and
showing their interconnections.
Flowcharts can be drawn at different levels of detail. The high-level flowchart is the
simplest, followed by the detailed flowchart at an intermediate level of complexity, and the
matrix (or deployment) flowchart at the highest level of complexity. Matrix flowcharts
have all the intrinsic details of the process and detailed information of a department or
person involved in the process.
High-level flowcharts are useful in food processing as a quick bird's eye view of the whole
process (e.g., Fig. 5.3 for beer making); however, it does not contain enough details of the
process to apply metrics to assess the impacts and detailed flowcharts are better suited for this
purpose. The inclusion of processing parameters such as flows, temperature, concentrations,
and energy consumption make the detailed flowchart a useful tool to assess the impact of each
step. A detailed flowchart with process parameters is also called “process steps flowchart”
(López Gómez and Barbosa-Cánovas, 2005) and is presented in Figure 5.4.
Constructing a detailed flowchart can be time-consuming and take some iteration to get it
right. Some time can be saved by following the following procedure:
1.
Define the major steps of the whole system.
2.
Draw a high-level flowchart.
3.
Define the substeps for each step.
4.
Draw detailed flowcharts for each step.
5.
Put all the steps together.
6.
Review the flowchart for accuracy.
7.
Define the boundaries.
