Inspection and Monitoring: An Investment for the Future

With increasing globalization, the competitive pressure is rising throughout the industry. Producers are facing growing cost pressure on the one hand and increasing quality requirements on the other. Efficiency is the key word, and the right investment in the right equipment can be a business-saving move.

When investing in new equipment, it is often only the equipment price and, if applicable, the design-in that are decisive for the purchase, while costs for maintenance, repair or wearing parts are given little consideration. The list of indirect costs is long: the lack of compatibility with other manufacturer’s products or the non-use of technical features can also make a purchase more expensive in the long run.

Checkweighers

With its “Invest to Save” initiative, Minebea Intec, a manufacturer of industrial weighing and inspection technologies, aims to demonstrate how precise technology, professional advice, efficient service and staff training can lead to significant cost savings. Initial additional costs pay off quickly over the years and thus offer an earlier return on investment. Minebea Intec experts are available to advise interested parties, for example, on the analysis of their total cost of ownership, which visualizes all cost factors. 

“A good example of smart product features is Trend Control, which is available for numerous dynamic checkweighers from Minebea Intec. It benefits customers from all industries that use filling, portioning or cutting machines. While overfilling is characterized by unnecessary material loss, the opposite is equally negative for production: underfilling during production can result in expensive recalls and thus cause lasting damage to the brand. To avoid this, many producers often accept unnecessary overfilling, which causes additional costs. Trend Control of the Minebea Intec checkweighers counteracts this by controlling upstream filling and portioning processes. As a result, the dynamic checkweighers prove to be an investment in greater efficiency and less raw material consumption,” Minebea’s experts point out.

X-Ray Inspection

Ishida Europe Ltd has introduced a holistic complete product offering across its entire X-ray portfolio that provides customers with peace of mind and delivers a guaranteed Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of less than 3% per annum over a 5-year period.  

The adoption of X-ray technology has greatly increased over the last decade as food retailers place greater quality demands on their supply base. X-ray platforms can offer significant benefits over alternative foreign body detection technologies such as metal detectors, thanks to their ability to detect a wide range of foreign body contaminants beyond metal, including glass, stones, ceramics and rubber. They can also provide additional functionality, including checking for missing items, damaged products or the correct fill level.   

“An investment in X-ray technology by a food producer is a clear sign that they have a focus on ensuring the quality of their products to their end customers,” says Sibtain Naqvi, Ishida Europe’s X-ray product manager. “However, a concern that food companies have raised with us around X-ray technology is the additional training and the costs surrounding the replacement of some of the components.”  

While the majority of the spare parts required for X-ray equipment are relatively low cost and in line with the maintenance requirements around checkweighers, the systems’ X-ray generators and line sensors can be quite costly items to replace. Ishida has therefore introduced unique low-cost service packages for new X-ray machines that incorporate complete coverage for the units over a 5-year period. 

“Although these components in our X-ray inspection systems already come with standard warranties which are on average around two years, and their rugged and reliable construction means they can typically last well beyond this warranty period, we have listened to our customers and devised a package that is unlike anything else currently available on the market and which will deliver additional benefits to users,” explains Sibtain Naqvi.  

You can read the rest of this article in the Summer Issue of Asia Pacific Baker & Biscuit magazine, which you can access by clicking here.