Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) businesses and equipment builders understand the importance of highly accurate and precise procedures as they deal with high automation machine and equipment design. If you’re in this industry, you must come up with innovative methods to achieve efficiency.
Automated weighing solutions help in controlling, monitoring and inspecting materials used in different OEM machines. Let’s look at some processes that would benefit from automated weighing solutions in OEM businesses.
4 Processes that Benefit from Automated Process Weighing Solutions
1. Inventory Management
You can use weighing scale solutions to manage inventory or stock throughout the manufacturing processes. Inventory management has proven to be quite a challenge for manufacturers on several occasions due to inaccurate weighing. You can use weighing solutions for:
- Weighing silos and vessels.
- Weighing throughput for manufacturers, irrespective of whether they are working with solids or liquids.
- Bulk weighing in processes that use bulk containers to ensure the total weight of what goes in and out is monitored and controlled.
- Measuring control of levels by weight, where sensors in the weighing solution adjust the levels by commencing refills and overflow control measures.
- Measuring inventory levels by weight since automated weighing solutions are the most accurate technology for measuring liquids as changes in various factors — such as density, uneven settling, foam formation and different container shapes — do not affect it.
Weighing solutions like shipping scales ensure accurate measures of used and available materials in a process.
2. Batching and Blending
Batch manufacturing consists of sequential and simultaneous procedures of adding and mixing one or more ingredients to make different products. It’s critical that you weigh and measure the exact amount of ingredients while putting it into the mixing vessels and also measure the batch while discharging it to the next processes.
Different processes that would benefit from weighing solutions like industrial weighing scales include:
- Batching by weight.
- Weight monitoring and feeder systems.
- Blending of the batch by rate controlled weight.
- Control of loss in weight by rate.
You will also reduce your losses and overall expenditure when you employ weighing solutions in these processes and systems.
3. Filling, Dispensing and Packaging
The three processes of filling, dispensing and packaging must be fast, accurate and capable of producing repeatable results. Adopting weighing solutions will help in increasing the speed, precision and overall efficiency of these processes. Moreover, you can reduce the time of production and losses that are a result of overfilling or under filling the contents.
You can fit load cells in containers or supply bins and integrate them with a weighing solution to get programmable control over processes that include net/gross weight filling, net weight dispensing and weighing of parts, pieces and portions. Using checkweighers for packaging will help in accurately weighing every single package coming out of different processes.
4. Inspection and Shipping of Products
You must weigh your products right from the inspection stage till you start shipping products. You need weighing solutions to determine the following factors:
- Verifying the packaged contents.
- Classifying the products.
- Identifying various parts.
- Checking for product tolerance and overload safety.
You will need weighing solutions for the checkweighing process and crane failure protection. The former involves checking the above-mentioned factors at any inspection station as soon as manufacturing and packaging phases are executed, while the latter involves checking for overloads and metal fatigues that may cause crane damage. The final step consists of pallet weighing where products are assembled and charges are calculated.
By implementing automated packaging and weighing solutions, you can also reduce the costs in various processes of design, development and delivery as well as increase your profits.
Author Bio
Kevin Hill is the content editor and online marketing manager at Quality Scales Unlimited. Always an early adopter and fast learner; Kevin combines his technical knowledge with content marketing in creative ways to give Quality Scales Unlimited a competitive edge.