Formulate Procedure

The user should already have a formula entered in the Formula Development section. The formula must have constraints set for properties and possibly ingredients. To learn how to do this, please refer to Tutorial – AI Formulation, Yogurt Formula Example.

Press the Formulate button found just above the Add Ingredients button, to determine the recipe amounts to meet all ingredient and property constraints while minimizing price.

Formulating – Changing the Degree of Accuracy

The user should already have a formula entered in the Formula Development section. To learn how to do this, please refer to Tutorial – AI Formulation, Yogurt Formula Example.

Typically, ingredients and properties are formulated and displayed to 3 decimal places. If for example you are trying to add a small amount of a flavoring, more than 3 decimal places may be required.

To change the number of decimal places, select the Min and Max cells for the ingredient or property. Note – you can change the number of decimal places for cells in the %(Wt./Wt.) and the Composition columns too.

Click the Cell Edit button and click Increase Decimal Point.

Note – to reduce the number of decimal places select Reduce Decimal Point instead.

The figure below shows the %(Wt./Wt.), Min and Max columns after the number of decimal places were increased. Now instead of formulating the culture ingredient to 0.002 it will be formulating to 0.00212.

Formulate for Batch Size Feature

Introduction

TechWizard Online™ can now formulate for a batch amount. A batch size amount or batch size range can be set. TechWizard Online™ formulates to meet requirements for the batch amount instead of a 100% basis. The batch amount feature also provides for setting an increment, minimum value, and maximum value for unit amounts. For example, you can set an ingredient range for the number of barrels to use in a batch and set the interval to 1. This means that only whole barrel amounts for this ingredient would be used during the optimization procedure.

Formulate Settings Interface

The user clicks the Formulate Settings button (A) to access the new features. The current formulate settings are displayed here (B). If the user sets the formula to formulate for a batch amount, then the user can set an increment (C) for each ingredient. This is the value the formulate procedure will vary the ingredient by to meet requirements. In this example Beef 50, Pork 42, and Pork 72 are incremented by pounds. The next two columns (D) are used to set minimum and maximum amounts for each production unit. To the right of this are the diagnostics for these ranges. Keep in mind that you can set either a min, max range for the ingredient percent (E) or for the production unit (D). The formulation procedure will fail if a min, max range is set for both percent and production unit for the same ingredient. Note: Setting the ingredient percent min, max range (E) to 0 and 100 means that range is not set.

When the user clicks the Formulate Settings button (A in figure above) the Formulate Settings window appears.

The user can enter a value for shrink in the space provided (F). The formulation can be based on Percent or Batch Size (G).
The Percent option determines the amount of each ingredient to meet all requirements and sum to 100%. The Batch Size option determines the amount of each ingredient to achieve a set batch size (H). In this example, the batch size is 3000 lbs.

The following settings are available for the Batch Size option:

I – The number of decimal places to report for the batch.
J – The acceptable amount the batch size can fluctuate below or above the set batch size.
K – The required precision when obtaining a result.
L – The default production unit if none is added for an ingredient.
M – An increment amount result is obtained for any ingredient that has a value entered in the Increment column (C in above figure).