No more ice cream headaches

Dal grad Andrea Cameron test-drives a new flavour at Scotsburn's ice-cream plant near Truro. (Nick Pearce Photo)

Apparently the Barenaked Ladies have just been given their own ice cream—appropriately called If I Had 1,000,000 Flavors.

A million flavours! Scotsburn Dairy has quite enough to handle with its 320 flavors—and has scooped up Dal engineering graduate Andrea Cameron to help figure it all out.

The 25-year-old Ms. Cameron, who graduated from Dalhousie May 27 with her Master of Applied Science, worked with Scotsburn in their Truro ice cream plant as a project for her master’s degree. The project involved creating scheduling models for an ever-growing company with a unique business problem: although its plant rolls all year long, the greatest demand for the product happens during a relatively short, summertime window.

“Our questions included when do we put what on the line? How much warehouse space for storage is needed? What products should we have ready ahead of time?” says Jeff Burrows, director of finance for the century-old Nova Scotia company. “Andrea really took these problems and ran with them to come up with solutions.”

With flavours including Caramel Cowmotion, Mousse on the Loose and Udderly Divine, Scotsburn makes ice cream, frozen yogurt and sherbet under its own name along with manufacturing private label ice cream for all the major national retailers. Vanilla and chocolate, closely followed by Hoof Prints, are its most popular flavours.

“These are all different recipes, all different degrees of creaminess,” says Mr. Burrows. “It’s very complicated to organize.”

Ms. Cameron created three scheduling models: for daily production, short-term production and long-term production (over a year.) Complicating factors include the sequencing of flavors; for example, once recipes containing potential allergens like peanuts, almonds, gluten and wheat go on the line, more time has to be spent cleaning and rinsing the equipment afterwards.

“You want to minimize the set-up costs and time, but at the same time, you don’t want to have to store anything too long because refrigerated warehousing is expensive,” says Ms. Cameron, who confesses a fondness for Scotsburn’s fudge-brownie frozen yogurt.

The project was a success from Scotsburn’s end: not only did they hire Ms. Cameron as an engineering consultant, her work is being adapted for production facilities in Saint John, N.B., and St. John’s, Nfld. Mr. Burrows estimates cost savings are in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Not only that: the company is keen to collaborate with Dalhousie engineering students on other projects.

“We’d like to think this is where we are going,” says Corinne MacDonald, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering. She, along with Prof. Eldon Gunn, was Ms. Cameron’s supervisor.

“Anytime we as applied scientists can solve really complicated problems like these, that’s where real learning comes in and the real benefits for our industrial partners,” she adds.

“It’s been absolutely exhilarating,” says Ms. Cameron. “Everyone feels confident in the work were doing together.”

DISCUSSION: Just for fun, if you got a chance to name an ice-cream flavour, what would you come up with? Join our summertime discussion.