We use carts to hold product between operations. It’s hard for operators to know how many finished cases are on a cart at time and we run into issues with over/under run and qty reporting timing. We’ll have product finished on final operation before we get the stuff reported on the first one which confuses #WipIsGarbage.
We don’t really need per bag accuracy in count but that would be great if achievable. Really I’m just looking for a way to show them how many cases of 250/500 are on a cart at a time so i’m weighing in LBs not OZs at that point.
Whatever the scale is as long as I can read the weight to a PLC for calculating count from the weight and perform my qty reporting in Epicor from there I will be happy.
Anyone have experience with this that they can share?
I haven’t hooked it to a plc, but we have scales here that have a serial output / control interface,
and we were going to hook it to an external monitor at one point but they never asked again.
If word on the street is that it’s been good and accurate for you then heck yeah fire over the brand. If it has serial or analog out we can make the rest happen from there.
@jgiese.wci
I was going to recommend a digital scale as well, when you said pounds was all that mattered. One type to look for might be a pallet Jack scale. I’ve seen maintenance shops modify them to fit the needs of the production line.
However, I worked for a company that created sheets of plastic in varying thicknesses per part number, and prior to my time there they had attempted to use scales as well, however, they needed ounce precision and that ended up being problematic in many ways, so just look out for:
Forgetting To Tare Out
Scheduled Scale Calibrations
Ensuring the scale is balanced and level
Power Interruption (or brownout, resetting the scale)
Variation in thickness, while in spec for the product changed the weight of each item and over hundreds of units provided inaccurate counts.
We then messed around with different options (reed switch, IR counters, etc) for counting and ended up with a type of vision system that could identify the parts profile and dimensions (to insure the whole sheet was there) and would have a display with the count. There was then a little panel nearby with a few buttons: A Plus, Minus, zero & Enter\submit. They would use the Plus & Minus to adjust the count on screen to account for scrap and such. Zero to reset the count and Enter\submit to send the count to Epicor. It was somewhat a purpose built system by some company, unfortunately I don’t recall their name. However, since then, DIY visions systems are much more accessible and I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t piece together your own solution.
We are getting bag counts off the machines, but the the product is typically 27-40 pounds a case. I feel like if i’m at .5 resolution I should be able to make some assumptions on how many full cases (our IUM) are on a cart at a time. They typically put them on the cart stacks of 50 to 100 at time so every addition will be a solid couple pounds. We have ±10% on this product for over/under run (all custom) but we for sure don’t want to rely on that as our safety net all the time. If we could tighten up the count and order of operations for WIP it’s a couple of solid wins.
