Case study: a slaughterhouse that loses chicken between the crate and the freezer, find where

This lesson is part of Slaughterhouse and processing specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.

A slaughterhouse owner from the East calls in November: "My chicken is being stolen. I buy 2,000 chickens a week, I should get 3,100 kg of carcasses out, I sell 2,870. There are 230 kilos missing every week and I am going to dismiss the team." He is right about one thing: chicken is missing. He is wrong about the rest, and this lesson shows why, by going back over his week weighing by weighing, from the reception scale to the freezer count. We apply the methods of the specialisation one by one, quantify each loss, rank them, and write the correction plan. It is the typical exercise of the specialisation exam.

• ✓Reconstruct the mass balance of a slaughterhouse week (live weight in, carcasses out, gap) and situate it against the reference yields
• ✓Go through the chain point by point (reception, fast, scalding, evisceration, cutting, cold, stock, scale) to quantify each loss
• ✓Rank the losses by weight and by ease of correction, and distinguish technical loss, organisational loss and unexplained shortfall
• ✓Write the correction plan with its monitoring indicators, and say what the registers would have shown beforehand

1. The situation and the mass balance
2. The chain point by point: where the chicken goes
3. Ranking the losses and naming the causes
4. The correction plan
5. What should have been done before
6. Going further

• •Mass balance first: 4,400 kg live, 2,870 kg of carcasses, 254 kg gap (8.1 %), yield 65.2 % instead of 71 % → several losses of 1 to 3 % that add up, not theft alone.
• •Going through the chain: scale +2 % (88 kg live paid for nothing), 50 dead on arrival (78 kg), 18 h fast (51 kg), torn intestines 4.5 % (41 kg), 24 unrecorded bags (36 kg), 15 rejects (23 kg), trimmings of the downgraded at 62 °C (15 kg): 244 kg explained out of 254.
• •Root cause: the late pick-up and the afternoon slaughter explain four lines out of six (167 kg); a single decision (slaughter in the morning, crates at 8-10, pick-up 4:30) corrects them.
• •One-page plan: scale, thermostat, written exits and inventory in week 1; morning schedule and refrigeration unit in week 2; eviscerator training in weeks 2 to 4; mass balance every Saturday; six weeks later, yield 69.9 % and 3 kg unexplained.
• •What should have been done before: lot sheet every day, scale checked every morning, pace sheet every day, scalder read every 30 min, inventory every Saturday, weekly mass balance; count before accusing.