Improving Production Process with PECAN
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/20/2026) — Cargill is a Minnesota-based company that provides food and agricultural products to customers around the world. Working specifically with sponsors from the Animal Nutrition and Health division, ISyE seniors Jack Callinan, Jackson Jaffe, Riley Mills, Hadley Streit and Robert Weber were tasked with creating Plant Evaluator of Constraints in Animal Nutrition (PECAN), a robust and easy-to-use tool for five example animal food processing plants.
With higher production costs and successful implementation of lean tools in other divisions of Cargill, PECAN is designed in Excel as a constraints evaluator and functions as a scenario-based simulation system that assists managers in evaluating bottlenecks and assessing the need for capital investment throughout the facility.
To begin, the team met with primary stakeholders to gather knowledge and insights to create the tool. Then they completed a capacity and constraints analysis to calculate the utilization of each constraint in the production process. Using the data, the team built the Excel spreadsheet. They then conducted user-testing with plant and production managers to receive feedback on the tool. Using their feedback, the team was able to develop a user-friendly tool that could be easily adopted in various plants.
Ultimately, the team created multiple deliverables - six corresponding with the tabs on the Excel PECAN tool; one corresponding to a data-loading mechanism that loads each factory’s data; and two that are related to user testing, and a preparation and analysis document.
The final deliverable was a formal presentation to stakeholders, as well as upper management at Cargill headquarters in Wayzata, Minnesota. Here the team presented the tool, including the product scope and project preparation, as well as a demonstration of how to use the various feature of the tool.
The ISyE team explains, “The PECAN tool will be used to evaluate the current and future state of any Animal Nutrition and Health plant. If any current assets are over-utilized, managers can generate scenarios to alleviate the bottlenecks with changes such as adding overtime shifts or upgrading machinery. In addition, they can utilize scenarios to evaluate the future state of their factory, while allowing them to estimate the impacts of changes like additional demand or different shift schedules.”
Through strong communication channels and team structure, as well as a clear scope and proactive mindset, the team successfully implemented a quality project and deliverables for the Cargill team.