Nong Shim Plant Wins CMAA Award
East Meets West Coast with Construction of High-Tech Noodle Plant
Bridging two cultures, Austin AECOM recently completed the first U.S. manufacturing facility for Nong Shim Foods, Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Nong Shim, a Korea-based corporation, is the largest ramen noodle manufacturer in Korea with plans to become the top producer in the United States. The company takes great pride in being the most technologically advanced ramen noodle manufacturer in the world and entrusted completion of their latest state-of-the-art facility to Austin AECOM. This successful endeavor earned Austin AECOM a 2006 Project Achievement Award from the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA), Southern California chapter. The mission of CMAA is to promote professionalism and excellence in the management of the construction process. Membership in CMAA includes more than 3,000 firms and individuals.
Austin AECOM provided construction and process engineering services for the new 270,000-square-foot Nong Shim corporate headquarters, manufacturing and distribution facility. The building is a concrete tilt-up structure and houses the noodle and soup processes. Each noodle line consists of a mixer dropping vertically through a mezzanine into the dough kneader, compound rollers, continuous rollers, steamer, fryer, cooling conveyor and then to the final sorting and packaging stage. All lines are linear and precisely aligned to very tight tolerances required for noodle production. There are small bowl, big bowl and packaged types of noodle products, hence each line is somewhat different. In the 3-story soup manufacturing facility, the soup is manufactured through a series of very complicated blending, evaporating, vacuum drying, pulverizing, and re-blending processes and is ultimately packaged in small pouches. The pouches are conveyed to the second-story packaging room and then to the first-story packaging room where they are co-packaged with the noodle product. The soup and noodle lines are supported by fully-automated systems with state-of-the-art features. Central control rooms, designed to accommodate future growth, monitor all plant functions.
The building features unique public viewing areas that showcase the facility and products. As visitors enter the facility, they are directed to a large “Welcome Room” that displays the Nong Shim products and provides a description of the process and history on a series of 40 high-definition 42-inch plasma screens. Visitors continue through a gowning and hand wash area and air showers before entering the two-story, one-hour viewing corridor that separates the noodle and soup processes. The corridor walls have large windows that provide a clear view of each process area.
Project challenges included a one-year construction period with time lost to more than six weeks of high wind and record rainfall; location on a 13-acre greenfield site; and stringent manufacturing process evaluation by California’s permit and environmental agencies. The most important achievement of this endeavor was that Nong Shim and Austin AECOM, two teams from very different cultures, combined to produce an incredible facility and a successful venture into the United States for a top Korean company.
