Our 5 top tips for improving quality control in your production lines
Food manufacturing is very much a standards driven industry isn’t it? Supermarkets have quality standards which relate to size, shape, freshness and visual appeal. Then there is international and regional weights and measures legislation to consider. As a manufacturer you need to understand these to stay ahead of the compliance game to maintain your profitability. You can do without product giveaway resulting from non-compliance.
To ensure you comply with the myriad food industry standards your best bet is to introduce robust quality control to your operation. Here are our top five tips to help you do that.
Install accurate checkweighers
One of the requirements of process manufacturing is ensuring that packaging contents are accurate and compliant with local weights and measures legislation. Another related issue is reducing or (eliminating) over or underweight packs. This results in either product giveaway or waste. Either way these issues, if not addressed will cost you money and adversely affect your bottom line. The most effective solution is to install a checkweigher in your production line. This will ensure your compliance with legislation – and your weight control/quality control. It also enables 100 per cent inline sampling of the product weight to legislation.
Current UK legislation governing packaged goods was set by the National Measurement and Regulation Office to reflect changes to the legislation introduced in 2014 by the Weights and Measures (Food) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2975) and in 2015 by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Commencement No.3, Transitional Provisions, Savings and Consequential Amendments) Order 2015.
Yamato I and J series checkweighers are designed specifically for the High-End Food Industry. They comply to the IP67 Standard for the ingress of water and contaminants and can comply with IP69K with additional motor seals only upgrade. They feature full stainless-steel construction and are fully polished for improved hygiene. They are also fully supermarket compliant.
Yamato machines are compliant with the CE Mark, the Machinery Directive in relation to local UK safety compliance with machine guarding and risk assessments.
The Yamato I series Checkweigher is also fully Measuring Instrument Directive (MID) compliant. MID compliance is an option and requires initial verification if the only source of the average weight measurement is the Checkweigher. If it is not, then an offline type approved static scale must be used. This is a sales advantage. Trading Standards in the UK or the National Standards Authority of Ireland in Eire must test, approve and stamp the Checkweigher before it can be used after installation to run the line correctly.
Basically, the bottom line is that a Yamato checkweigher in your production line puts you in control of compliance. If you install a checkweigher in your line you can comply with health and safety, accuracy and national weights and measures standards in addition to the supermarket’s own standards across the UK and Europe – putting you at a competitive advantage.
J-series checkweighers are ideal if you need to comply with supermarket requirements. I-Series checkweighers are IP67 compliant and use Yamato to Yamato continuous weighing optimisation to ensure high accuracy to enhance your performance levels and increase your productivity.
Use metal detection
Accurate metal detection prevents hazardous foreign body contaminants from tainting your products. Quality is assured, and the flexible system suits a variety of industry applications.
Other benefits to your operations include waste reduction, reduced costs, improved efficiency, enhanced food safety and compliance.
Having a state-of-the-art metal detection system at the end of your production line ensures the consistent quality and safety of your products.
At Yamato, there are two checkweigher metal detection combination systems to choose from depending on your requirements, full-size combination and slimline.
The full-size system is highly adaptable to any product requiring inspection. It can operate various methods of product rejection depending on pack type. You can run a wide range of pack styles and orientations and is the ideal choice for ensuring supermarket and regulators’ food safety compliance.
The slimline combination system maximises available space where it is limited to ensure your products are safe and compliant.
Add x-ray to enhance safety
Ensure compliance with government and supermarket standards by using state-of-the-art metal detection with X-ray technology.
Our innovative automatic inspection YX20 X-ray equipment is compliant with BRC, Tesco and M&S standards and features an advanced linear array with proven inspection algorithms.
An X-ray system adds another layer of important checks to your processing and packaging line. Coming in the processing line after metal detection and checkweighing, an X-ray machine provides an additional deep visual check in real time for foreign bodies in your packaged products and automated rejection.
You have to appoint a Radiation Protection Supervisor (RPS) to ensure you comply with ionising radiations regulations: we can train them.
This flexible system suits a variety of industry applications, helping to reduce waste and costs, improve efficiency, enhance food safety and ensure compliance.
Adopt robust and accurate data collection and monitoring
Adding a data monitoring solution allows you to collect data in real time for comprehensive reporting so you can minimise downtime and waste to maximise productivity and ROI.
Reduce waste and improve productivity by analysing your data by line, product, shift and site using a suite of analytical tools which deliver relevant and informative reporting.
Accurate production monitoring means you can monitor compliance and calculate giveaway costings from any equipment data. You can also generate product performance reports which will help you to improve productivity and drive down the cost of waste.
Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) and downtime recording with additional modules quickly and accurately identifies online efficiencies from reliability problems on individual items of equipment to material supply problems.
Adopting a data monitoring solution is a must for helping you to improve your quality control.
Integrating machine to machine protocols
An efficient packaging line will comprise a variety of functions. You can either have a generic end-to-end production line or you may need a specific turnkey solution for an individual project. Whatever your requirement, your line is likely to include feeding, multihead weigher, bagging system, conveyors, checkweigher and inspection solution – either metal detection, X-ray or both. These machines will need to communicate with one another in order to share data. Using a single standard comms protocol along the whole line means that you can fully integrate your production line to ensure quality.
If your production line requires a less conventional set up, the communications conventions, like the Y2Y protocol, still allow for a bespoke solution to ensure efficiency and accuracy. Adopting communications protocol allows you to run complex efficient processes with best in class machinery which can be fully integrated with other partner equipment such as metal detectors and bag making machines, to provide a complete weighing solution tailored to individual specifications.
Using a single supplier that can deliver automation for different production functions with a single communication protocol means machines can collect data and communicate it between them to ensure smooth, uninterrupted production.
A high degree of sophistication is needed to meet the demands of complex networks and the development of the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This means the increasing volumes and sheer variety of data.
Connections for machine to machine communication must be able to withstand frequent cleaning and mechanical, thermal and chemical stresses.
To ensure the maximum efficiency of a full-line solution each element communicates with the other using unique Yamato 2 Yamato protocol enables very quick recalibration. This results in significant cost efficiency thanks to reduced giveaway and better accuracy.
Machines communicate using serial bus and ethernet. This allows you to experience increased speed, increased accuracy, higher efficiency, faster troubleshooting, easier diagnostics, faster error recovery, and maximized uptime to increase your profits and reduce your maintenance and downtime costs.
So, there you have our top five tips or improving your quality control.