JMP Keeps Things Moving for Food Industry Customer
The Customer's Challenge
The cereals and dry snacks division of a globally recognized food manufacturer was having problems keeping their sorting conveyors moving. Two main in-feed conveyors would each deflect cases to one of eight secondary conveyors, for a total of sixteen possible paths. The existing barcode system was at the end of its lifecycle; hence increased downtime, troubleshooting challenges, and product misreads were having a direct impact on their bottom line. Ultimately, whenever the system went down it resulted in at least eight different downstream processes would no longer receive product.
The JMP Approach
It was clear that something had to be done about the bottleneck situation that would occur during scanner failure. Working closely with the customer and their existing in house technology, the JMP team devised a new system configuration. Under the previous setup, packaged goods would travel along one of the two main conveyors. After being scanned, the goods would then pass 8 consecutive lanes branching off of the main conveyor like a "T". Each of these smaller lanes had a deflector mechanism which would activate accordingly once the scanner had determined the destination for the incoming product. A downed scanner would therefore impact all 8 lanes. JMP opted to install a scanner just before each of the 16 individual lanes, as opposed to one for each set of 8, and the success of the sorting operation was no longer dependent on a single component. Scanner failure would now only affect the particular lane to which it was dedicated, leading to a drastic reduction in the impact on overall throughput for the operation.
JMP's Unique Value
JMP's existing long term partnership with the client was a direct result of delivering years of cost effective and reliable solutions. Through our intimate knowledge of their internal processes, as well as over 20 years of experience in the food and beverage sector, the JMP team was able to leverage the existing in-house controls architecture and minimize engineering time.
The Customer Payoff
The new scanner system provides the customer with higher levels of performance: increased reliability, easier maintenance and trouble shooting, and a reduction in bottlenecks.