ESE, Inc., the Engineering Solutions Experts, announced that process cheese producer Whitehall Specialties has selected ESE's Q5L Near Infrared Analyzer to improve batch quality and reduce rework in its cheese production processes. This will be the third plant that Whitehall has chosen ESE, Inc. and the Q5L NIR Analyzer.

The Q5L is part of the Q5 NIR Series that analyzes batches in as little as five seconds, contains no moving parts to ensure sample accuracy and repeatability and can sample multiple constituents without preparation or clean up work.

"The combination of the Q5L Near Infrared Analyzer with ESE's Process Optimizer software adds tremendous value to our cheese production process," says Carl Peterson, lab supervisor at Whitehall Specialties. "Before ESE we had to test cheese batches manually, which took up to 15 to 20 minutes while four to five batches were passing through quality control. Now with ESE, we test batches every two to five seconds, and we can catch batches out of tolerance while still being processed. The most significant benefit has been improved labor utilization we have seen at the first two plants. We have moved testing from the lab's responsibility to the operator's responsibility, resulting in redeployed labor and eliminating the need to hire additional staff to handle our company's increasing volume."

"ESE is committed to helping customers like Whitehall Specialties improve their operations and provide a fast return on investment," says Tom Walther, president of ESE. "When we first started working with Whitehall, they needed a fast, multi-constituent analysis capability for testing on the production line to respond quickly to batch problems, reduce rework and potentially salvage a bad batch. Now we are working with Whitehall in their third plant, and we are pleased to see the great results that our customer is realizing with the Q5L Near Infrared Analyzer."

ESE's Q5 family of Near Infrared Analyzers is designed to help manufacturers in the food and beverage industries test and measure food constituents against calibration models set up in the Process Optimizer application in a lab environment or right on the production line. The Q5 NIR Series can analyze a batch in as little as five seconds, contains no moving parts to ensure sample accuracy and repeatability and can illustrate multiple constituents without preparation or clean up work. The Q5L is built to withstand extreme conditions in a production environment and can be mounted in a NEMA 4X enclosure.