There's a lot at stake when it comes to selecting weighing or inspection systems. Aside from legal penalties for mismatching product weights with labels, applying incorrect use by dates or foreign bodies in packs, retailers treat mistakes harshly.
"UK supermarkets have been hammering at manufacturers where products have the wrong bar code or date on, saying 'you pay rectification costs'," says Roy Green, md, Harford Control, specialist in in-line performance management. "One retailer charges £50,000 for a first offence." Green says he's aware of charges topping £120,000.
Little wonder, then, that technology is constantly evolving to detect foreign bodies more easily. For example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is funding LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which aims to detect the presence of contaminants such as insects, particularly in pre-packed foodstuffs. The system is being adapted from use as a measure of atmospheric composition and pollution employed by satellites.
Satellite vision technology also lies behind Bühler Sortex's recent launch of its InGaAS Sortex E sorter, which uses short wave infra-red light to inspect frozen fruit and vegetables. Marketing director Charith Gunawardena adds: "You can plug a modem into it and, with an individual ethernet connection, go through data anywhere in the world."
While Bühler Sortex focuses on vision, Smiths Detection is busying itself with a different sense altogether. It aims to roll out electronic nose technology in the UK within six months, using a nano-composite array to 'sniff' out packaging contaminants and meat spoilage.
New technology is also being used to check for quality and consistency. Take Campden BRI's DigiEye research. The vision system uses a digital camera, printer and monitor to scan the whole product, ensuring complete colour consistency. It can also measure the shape, size and structure of food including the visual effects of different baking times or the distribution of cherries in a fruitcake. Colorimeters or spectrophotometers typically measure small areas of product and so can only approximate the colour of the whole.
Away from the latest specialist inspection methods, the demand is for integration, automation and easy access to information. The more kit has to be scrutinised individually, the more manual involvement there is, the longer it takes to identify and solve problems and the greater the margin for error.
"A continuing trend will be the move away from weighing towards an info-node system that pinpoints losses," says Simon Hallam, global product manager, software solutions, at Avery Weigh Tronix. "It's not just about how much something weighs or how much turmeric there is in a product. It's about devices that give and collect more qualitative information."
Ishida's Data Capture System perfectly illustrates this integrated approach. It feeds data from every pack weighed by up to 100 checkweighers into a single secure database. This provides information that can be analysed by batch, shift, operator, product or machine and fully customised to include features such as production histograms, downtime and daily reports. Pack details such as product and film wastage can be effectively identified.
"Successful weighing is only half the battle," says Paul Griffin, marketing and business development director of Ishida Europe. "All pack types may need further quality checks such as X-ray and label inspection. A true packing solution has to encompass these elements in a fully integrated, efficient line."
Harford Control is working with Dairy Crest to link its production line equipment at its Gloucestershire plant. The dairy processor's Oracle materials requirements planning system has been connected to Harford's systems, so operators know exactly what, and how much, they are producing.
A similar initiative for Dairy Farmers of Britain (DFoB) has involved Harford installing touch screen systems that verify correct products from pictorial representations. This then cues up and links in-line barcode scanners, date coders and online computers. In the first year of operation, the move boosted overall equipment effectiveness by 50%, eliminated compliance issues and cut wastage.
The appetite for integration is leading Smiths Detection to combine many inspection functions in single machines, says Terry Woolford, vice president - sales and marketing, commercial safety and security.
For example, "X-ray acts as a hub for several different systems", he says. In addition, Smiths' Liveware kit "hooks together X-ray, cameras and chemical detectors"
As weighers and inspection devices are able to provide increasingly detailed information, so kit suppliers are ensuring that customers have the quickest access to it in real time.
"Metal detectors have programmable screens providing bar graphs and log books - this now becomes a standard part of a customer's requirements," says Richard Lines, md of S+S Inspection. "You don't have to have streams of data. You can have a snapshot of what happens on a line relatively quickly."
Roland Bosshard, marketing manager, business area systems, Mettler Toledo Switzerland, says: "We are producing specialised scales hooked to a local area network, so users can press one or two buttons and walk away within a minute."
Weighers or inspection systems that communicate with operators and production managers via their mobile phones are just around the corner, says Bosshard. "I believe we will see much more of these kinds of things within the next three or four years."
Meantime, wireless connections are all the rage, he says. "Wiring a factory costs money. Replacing wiring with wi fi is cheaper. We have customers working on wi fi installations."
In addition, he says systems now allow users of various nationalities to access a central database overseeing weighers or inspection devices in their native languages simultaneously. A few button pushes can also re-calibrate equipment for whole new lines.
Integration, automation and rapid data access are definitely the buzzwords as technology is evolving to keep pace with fresh challenges. Which is just as well if manufacturers are to keep retailers satisfied and avoid those hefty penalties.
Uniq's joined up approach
At Uniq Prepared Foods' Moulton Park facility in Northampton, Marco has linked 12 semi-mobile stainless steel LineMaster portion control workstations via a wireless network to a central Datamaster terminal.
This terminal is pre-programmed with information covering all Uniq's products made at the factory, including more than a million sandwiches and wraps every week for Marks & Spencer and European airlines.
When line changes occur, new ingredient target weights and tolerances are transferred directly from the Datamaster to the scales.
To minimise giveaway (waste), Marco has developed Automatic Optimisation software. The package continually fine tunes target weights at individual workstations, based on real-time factory floor data relating to individual operator performance.
"The recently installed Marco system has proved to be a very cost effective way of controlling our ingredient weighing and has dramatically reduced our giveaway without compromising line speed," says Uniq project manager Lee Harris. "We have already seen a substantial reduction in prawn losses alone. It has improved our line efficiency through real-time data logging of usage, runtime, batch count and downtime."
Harris says operators can use the system to produce consistent and accurate weighings within one minute. And it has slashed set-up and changeover times, eradicating target weight errors.
"With our old system, line changes required each scale to be updated manually, which was not only time consuming, but also prone to data entry error," he says. "We are now looking to install Marco equipment on other production lines."
Key Contacts
Avery Weigh Tronix 0870 905 0084
Bühler Sortex 020 7055 7777
Campden BRI 01386 842000
Harford Control 01225 764461
Ishida 01332 293939
LIDAR Project 01664 420066
Marco 01342 870103
Mettler Toledo 0116 235 7070
S+S Inspection 01489 553740
Smiths Detection 01923 658000