Top 5 Reasons to Automate Powder Weighing
Whether you are manufacturing food, beverages, cosmetics, paint or even tyres, step one of your process is likely to be powder weighing. Taking all of the raw materials and combining the right quantities of each of these to create your batches for processing.
Traditionally, this has been a manual task; sacks, drums, scales, scoops and a lot of powder scattered all over the place. However, while William or Wilhelmina the weighers have been sweeping up the spills, technology has been happening to create AI-driven Robots to automate and modernise powder weighing.
Self-contained pods that can store over 100 raw materials, with a central robot that can automatically select, weigh and pour ingredients into accurate batches for processing, robotic Powder Weighing is enabling this critical step in the manufacturing process to be digitalised, automated and modernised and this is delivering some fundamental benefits that you should know about.
Here the top 5 reasons manufacturers are automating their powder weighing process.
1. Address Operative Health & Safety
Powder weighing is a hazardous task, even innocuous ingredients can be an irritant if repeatedly inhaled and as for toxic substances, regardless of the precautions you take, there is always a risk to health. By taking operatives outside of the weighing zone and replacing them with a robot, you fully address your duty of care and remove the risk. (Read more)
2. Scale Productivity
It goes without saying that a robot does not take holidays, is never sick and does not require lunch breaks. They can also run 24x7 ensuring they are always ahead of demand and never hold up your production line. This increases throughput while reducing labour costs and dependences. One robot running 24x7 can be the equivalent of 10 to 20 operatives when shifts, holidays and sickness are taken into account.
3. Improve Accuracy/Reduce Waste
It is not just about the spillage in manual operations, it is about the cost of getting it wrong. When an error occurs in the weighing and batching process, this is often only caught at the end of the production cycle creating wastage of both raw materials and processing time. With Robotic Weighing, human error is eliminated, the robot never gets tired or distracted and they weigh accurately every single time to within 1g.
4. Digitalise Traceability
Across every industry, traceability of source ingredients is critical. If there is an issue, it needs to be traced back to source, identifying any other batches that could be at risk, and driving continuous quality improvement. By eradicating paper and manual tracking, you are able to drive far better and more granular traceability. Through seamless integration of the Robot Weighing system with your manufacturing/production system, every batch can be tracked and analysed against its source ingredients.
5. Prevent Cross-Contamination
Anyone who has walked past the powder weighing area is well familiar of the risk of cross-contamination; it is inevitable with manual scooping and even when some form of piped dosing is being used. The precision of Robot Weighing and batching removes all of these points of cross-contamination, preventing it happening and significantly reducing risk.
These five points are just some of the ways that robotic powder weighing is delivering significant value and benefits to manufacturers. We know this because OAL is the leading innovator in this area and are helping organisations across a wide variety of sectors to modernise powder weighing to drive greater efficiency across their operation.
If you would like to discuss more about how these solutions work and how they would be beneficial to your operation, then simply reach out to the OAL team – contact us.