The online high-speed checkweigher with its versatile functioning – including easy integration, excellent accuracy, automatic measuring time adjustment, and weighing compensation – is often viewed as a necessary purchase. With these key features and the evolving role of this machine, the automatic checkweigher makes a significant contribution to the overall production and profitability in food manufacturing.
With the growing bias towards own-label products among retailers, for food manufacturers, this means an increase in the number of product lines they need to have and a further demand to cater to the different specifications and standards of their various products. Still at hand is the drive for value pricing for consumers, thus the necessity to maximize efficiencies.
As a result, factories are becoming more and more automated, and it is up to the machinery to monitor the production quality. What the multi-head weigher cannot ensure in terms of distribution or filling, or completeness of the product, the checkweigher makes up for by ‘policing’ the production line, to avoid any problems in the manufacturing process. Further many of the checkweigher models today have the ability to provide feedback on the efficiency and the performance of various production lines.
In such a way, the software assesses the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of a line by constantly monitoring it in terms of availability, performance, and quality. This assessment allows companies to compare different lines thus allowing all the machines, even those at different locations, to work to the same standards.
The checkweigher’s statistical data facility also allows companies to take an instant action to improve their work. Manufacturers are able to identify various points of improvement – be it faulty
equipment, overweight packaging, or identifying the required settings (speed, flexibility, weight value, etc) for a particular line to work at its best form as per the requirements of a product. For example, information on overweight products could highlight an excess of a particular ingredient. The giveaway of a certain product and its ingredients is an important consideration especially in food manufacturing as a result of the recent trends in the retail sector to reduce the weight of products. This is in response to the increasing costs of raw materials, the need to maintain a particular price point, and the demand for smaller portions to combat food wastage and obesity.
Basically, the data derived from a checkweigher provides companies with not only the quality insurance of their products but also a constant real-time health check appropriate for its consumption.
Effective monitoring of production allows companies to make considerable savings in terms of expenditure on raw materials, and further avoiding negative hassles from having faulty software or equipment.
For any successful food manufacturer, the feedback of various equipment and production standards is crucial to maintaining good quality and thus stand to compete in the market. Here the modern checkweigher plays a key role in providing such information, ensuring companies adhere to relevant standards of manufacturing, and improving their OEE. With the growing competition in food markets and consumers’ pursuit of quality and value in their purchases, the need for such a machine to maximize efficiencies and profitability at every stage of production has become critical.
