Doubling Productivity with Weighing Solutions

Doubling Productivity – Weighing Solutions are the Key

A Spanish company that specializes in growing and handling carrots and leeks long sought how to improve its process in getting its products more quickly to market. Today, 33 PC-connected scales stand up to humidity and heavy loads to provide fast, traceable weighing at its processing facilities.

Cándido Muñoz was founded more than 40 years ago when Cándido, a greengrocer in Madrid, relocated to Segovia and began sending fresh country fruits back to the family stall. From those humble beginnings, Cándido Muñoz has grown to supply markets, supermarkets, and intermediary produce distributors with fresh carrots and leeks across Europe.

Today, the company has its own production facilities in Segovia and outsources some of its processing to both Segovia and Andalucia. Forty operators who handle orders work demanding shifts in humid conditions. Loads are particularly tough on Mondays and Fridays.

To keep pace with rising demand for its products and to ensure ongoing product quality, 33 METTLER TOLEDO scales and two Signature metal detectors were placed along three production lines. That helps ensure both weighing accuracy and that there is no contamination in company processes. Scales are connected to network PCs stationed outside the humid production floor to gauge operator performance, determine a day’s pay, and provide traceability.

The METTLER TOLEDO scales have more than doubled production. “The fact that they are able to monitor what is being weighed and processed by every operator has helped to create a great improvement in efficiency and productivity,” says David Muñoz Pascual, Cándido Muñoz.

Reliability in a harsh environment

Cándido Muñoz deployed scales designed to withstand wet and harsh environments. Thanks to the scales’ reliability under those difficult conditions, Cándido Muñoz personnel note a lack of technical problems both with the scales and scale connectivity. That is in stark contrast to the company’s previous scales, which constantly needed replacement parts.

The food processor now uses the ICS469 scales, with colorWeight® functionality. This feature speeds up the process by using colored lights on the terminal display to indicate when weights are within accepted tolerance. The ease of putting a carrot tray on a scale, adding produce until the light turns green, and then moving on to the next tray takes a lot of work out of the process, reducing operator fatigue and improving productivity.

The way loads are weighed depends on whether it is a bulk order for a produce stand or packaged goods for a supermarket. Some scales must stand up to bulk boxes of machine-washed produce that are checkweighed. Operators also prepare individual vegetables for plastic bagging, sometimes cutting off ends, and then adding them to tared trays.

Worry-free weighing for years

Cándido Muñoz operators are very pleased with the way the scales stand up to all their processes while offering pristine connectivity to their PC-based tracking system. The company expects that their scales will provide them with worry-free weighing for many more years to come.

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