Lay's North America Factory (USA)
Purchased model: 50 units of 300kg industrial-grade vacuum low-temperature fryers
Main business: clustered production of potato chips and healthy fruit & vegetable crisps
Customer Background & Pain Points:
As a global leader in savory snacks, the brand faces pressure to move toward healthier products, as traditional high-temperature sliced potato chips have high oil content and are prone to producing acrylamide.
As a mega-factory, its core pain points lie in batch-to-batch consistency under large-scale clustered production, equipment utilization rate, and enormous energy consumption pressure.
Customized Technology & Solutions:
Mega-cluster PLC digital control: all 50 machines are connected to a central intelligent control system that automatically saves and applies unified process recipes, achieving millisecond-level temperature control and intermittent vacuum pressure regulation to ensure every bag of chips produced worldwide has a highly consistent taste.
High-volume exhaust efficient dewatering system: with optimized condensation and steam paths tailored to the high moisture content of potatoes, it greatly improves sublimation and dewatering efficiency and accelerates the pace of single-batch production.
Smart energy-saving and heat recovery design: matched with an efficient heat transfer architecture, it reduces steam and power load when the large cluster operates simultaneously.
Quantified Value & Efficiency Gains:
Super throughput (15 tons of raw material per batch): 50 machines run in parallel matrix, with a processing capacity of 15 tons of fresh material per batch, completely breaking through the capacity bottleneck of the global healthy chips bestseller supply chain.
Standardization and zero-defect delivery: batch pass rate approaches 100%, with perfect control of the Maillard reaction in starchy materials — chips come out golden in their natural color with no scorching or darkening.
Huge reduction in energy and oil costs: cluster-based intelligent management improves the overall thermal efficiency of the plant, slashing the mega-factory's long-term operating energy costs.
Executive Testimonial & Endorsement (Client Endorsement):
“When managing a super production matrix of 50 large industrial machines, the two words we care about most are **'batch consistency' and 'energy control'**. Materials with high moisture content like potatoes demand extremely high dewatering efficiency.
Xinlianxing's fully automatic PLC smart control and high-volume exhaust dewatering system perfectly solved Maillard reaction control in mass production, ensuring every bag of our products worldwide has a golden color and millisecond-consistent crispy texture. The efficient heat transfer and energy-saving design of the 50 machines quickly slashed our huge electricity and steam costs. This is one of the most successful engineering investments we have made in building our next-generation healthy snack capacity.”
— VP of Global Supply Chain & Engineering, Lay's North America