Automation and control specialist, A&D Australasia, has been commissioned by a beverage producer to design and manufacture a waste reduction weighing system to account for stock discrepancies which arise after raw materials are used in production processes.
According to A&D Australasia, a typical process for the beverage company involved the stores preparing raw materials for each product run, such as liquids, powders, caps, labels, and packaging. On completion of that batch run, production would have the remaining stock of various materials in part measures, for example, half a roll of labels, and quarter of a tub of flavouring.
These remaining quantities are said to have rarely matched what was expected “on paper” and it was becoming problematic on two fronts: there was obvious waste that was not being measured; and store discrepancies were common due to physical returns being short of the theoretical consumption.
In reaction to the issue, A&D Australasia says it use “off the shelf” components to design mobile, rechargeable, weighing trolleys with customised software running on an on-board touch panel PC. The trolleys incorporated either a wired or wireless link to a label printer that enabled production staff to accurately label the partly used items and sign off on the amount remaining.
Using the custom software created by A&D Australasia’s subsidiary A&D TechEng, the operator enters the product code via a touch screen dropdown keypad, then places the item on the trolley based scales and presses the digital “PRINT” button to produce a label. The software calculates the volume, weight or part count and includes this information on the label along with product information, date, time and an operator signature block.
The mobile trolley mounted waste reduction weighing systems are waterproof and require a four hour re-charge when needed.
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