Automated Batching to Increase Productivity
- Highly Accurate?Automated Batching of Minor and Micro Ingredients -
At AZO, our daily focus is on how to increase customers productivity and with it, also customer’s profitability. However, within the topic of ingredient handling automation, oftentimes the batching of minor and micro ingredients is overlooked.?Of course, automating bulk or major powder ingredients may be the lower hanging fruit in regards of improving productivity; however, automating minor and micro ingredient batching has game changing potential as well.
Typically, minor and micro ingredients are manually pre-weighed and then added by an operator to the mixing process, often via a small hopper above a mixer in the production area. As a result, many staff members are required with high degree of concentration during weighing and manual process addition. Furthermore, the operators are exposed to dust, while in turn, exposing the ingredients to contamination as well. The result? The whole manual process is prone to error, is time consuming and often difficult to track & trace.
From a mechanical point of view, automating minor and micro ingredients is more challenging, obviously due to the small quantities that require to be very accurately weighed. This becomes even more critical, when the costs for the minor and micro ingredients are relatively high.?However, AZO has developed a solution suitable to overcome the above-mentioned challenges.
The AZO COMPONENTER? Step makes it possible to weigh minor and micro components automatically accurate to the gram, such as pigments, colorings, flavoring agents, additives, active agents and numerous other micro quantities.
The AZO COMPONENTER? Step can be described as a system with two application levels. On the upper level, the raw materials are typically dumped into day storage bins by an operator. The lower level comprises of the dosing and weighing area as well as the transport mechanism for the target containers. To put it simple, the way how this system is designed allows a separation of the weighing process from the raw material logistics. Thus, the operator is not involved in the weighing process at all. As a result, a constant and highly accurate and less dusty batching process can be ensured while recipe secrecy is guarded as well.
The benefits are obvious as product safety is improved and continuously achieved while production efficiency is boosted through minimization of faulty batches and waste. The AZO COMPONENTER? Step may be used in the food, pharmaceutical, chemical, and plastic industry. For more details, please follow this link.
About AZO Ltd.
AZO Ltd. provides innovative bulk material and raw material handling solutions for the reliable automation of ingredient handling in the food, pharmaceutical, chemical and plastic industry in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
For more information about AZO’s solutions for the plastic industry, check out our?website?or sign up to AZO's?newsletter. We are looking forward to planning your next ingredient handling automation steps together with you!
written by: Jan-Wilko Helms