How Bottling Works in Coca-Cola Company Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

How Bottling Works in Coca-Cola Company
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
How Bottling Works in Coca-Cola Company
Introduction
This company is one of the largest soft drinks manufacturers in the world. It operates in more than 200 countries worldwide. Apart from manufacturing soft drinks, the company also licenses more than 400 nonalcoholic beverages. The company’s products are of high quality, making it very competitive in the beverages market. As a result, it has enjoyed success in every region that it operates (Applegate, 1996).
Despite the great success, the company faces challenges regularly due to the dynamic nature of the market. It must keep on improving especially in the production process to make sure it is still the leading company. New technology should be employed to each and every production stage to ensure the highest efficiency level possible is achieved. This measures will reduce the cost of production thereby enabling the company to make huge profits.
Coca-Cola have employed advanced technology in the production method. This is especially evident in the bottling process where robotic arms and hi-tech machines are used. The use of robots reduces the time taken to complete the process and increase efficiency. In addition to this, it requires very little manpower thus saving the company the cost of employing many people.
The first idea to bottle Coca-Cola originated from Joseph Whitehead and Ben Franklin. These two approached the owner of Coca-Cola at that time, Asa Griggs Candler, who granted them the right to bottle the drink. They utilized the newly available technology at that time, the use of bottle caps. At that time, there was only one design for bottles. Coca-Cola wanted to be unique, so they gave several firms tenders of developing a unique bottle design. From the many designs that were developed, they chose the one developed by Indiana glass plant. The design was modified by slimming, and it was called contour bottle (Applegate, 1996).
The Bottling Process
Before bottling is done, the containers are first made. Coca-Cola uses three types of containers to carry drinks. These are plastic bottles, aluminum cans and glass bottles. Fifty percent of all Coca-Cola products are delivered in polyethylene terephthalate bottles. These bottles are made by a different company. The raw material to make these bottles arrive by rail in the form of polyethylene terephthalate pellets. This is the only time that these pellets are visible during the manufacturing process. A vacuum hose is used to suck the pellets from the rail cars to huge silos. From here they are directed to the drying tanks where all moisture is removed to prepare them for processing. Soft drinks require seamless bottles to maintain the sparkling appearance. A preform is first made by pumping the pellets into an injection molding machine where a cock screw-shaped auger forces them into a heater that has high temperatures enough to melt these pellets. They are then forced into a mold that forms the first stage of polyethylene terephthalate bottle, the pre form. It is removed from the mold by a robot and delivered to another robot that cools them before taking them to a conveyor. About half a million preforms are made in one hour by 15 injection molding machines. At this point, the preforms look more like test tubes than bottles. The top part of the bottle is the only section that is complete. It is very crucial because that is where the machine will hold the pre form during the blowing process (Parker, 2006).
The preforms are then directed to another machine called the Oriento where the blowing takes place. They are too hard to be blown up, so they are taken through a heater that soften them. They are now ready to be inflated, so they are transported to the mold using gears. Stainless steel molds having the shape of a bottle are installed in the blowing machine. Each mold makes two bottles, and the machine can carry twenty molds. The machine makes 40 bottles per revolution. It makes about 800 bottles per minute, at the same time taking a photo of each. Their dimensions are analyzed by a computer system and those that does not meet all the standards are recycled. Those that passes the test are transported on a conveyor belt that uses air to suspend them. This special conveyor belt has air fans located close to each other. Pressurized air is fed into these fans from the air chamber. This conveyor is three times faster than the conventional conveyor belt. The bottles are directed to a machine called palletizer. A pair of robots stacks them in a pellet ready for transportation (Parker, 2006).
The process of bottling is divided into several units. These units are cleaning unit, water treatment unit, filling the flavor unit, packaging unit, and the inspection unit (Vvmp, 2001).
Cleaning Unit
This is the first stage in the process of bottling. The main purpose of this unit is to remove dirt or debris that could be in bottles. New as well as those bottles that have been returned to be reused are separated according to their sizes. A machine known as the DE palletizer receives the new bottles from the manufacturer. Even though the bottles are new, they must be cleaned first to remove any contamination that would have occurred during transportation (Hine, 2011).
Bottles are placed in a computer-controlled conveyor system that utilizes a feedback loop to monitor their movement. Bottles are taken to a cleaning machine via the conveyor belt. This machine has bottle holders with many pipes. High-pressure jet streams of water and detergent are used to clean them. The machine rotates at very high speed and cleans about 30000 bottles per hour. From here, the bottles are then taken to the rinsing machine. They are rinsed, steamed and sanitized to get rid of every contaminant. The bottles are turned upside down then flushed by rinsing water to remove any remaining dirt. They are then inspected visually to make sure they are 100 percent clean, not cracked and are not chipped. To ascertain this, they are passed through a machine that uses neon light to check for the tiniest dirt particle or crack. Those bottles that are perfect proceed to the filling station while those with defects are recycled (Hine, 2011).
Water Treatment Unit
About 80 percent of Coca-Cola drink is water. The water must be clean and free from any contamination. Therefore, there is a need for the water to be treated to make it safe to drink and to remove any odor that it may have bearing in mind it is sourced from local wells. Many plants use Nano filtration method to treat their water (Hine, 2011).
The first step in water treatment process is coagulation. It involves removing dirt and any other particle that may be suspended in water. This is done by adding alum to the water. It forms sticky particles that attract dirt particles thereby forming a heavy particle that sinks to the bottom of the tank. This water is then taken to a sedimentation tank through pipes. Here the heavy particles are left behind because water moves slowly towards the filter tank. Those particles that could not coagulate are filtered. Then the water moves to another tank where a purification chemical is added to kill bacteria and get rid of any odor that may be present. The water is stored in storage tanks ready for use.
Filling the Flavor Unit
This process starts with the arrival of Coca-Cola concen...