Giveaway is a key issue for manufacturers who produce fixed weight items. By monitoring overproduction (or giveaway) in real-time, the manufacturers in the three examples below have achieved significant savings, reduced their loss of raw materials, machine capacity, and labour.
Reducing Giveaway in the Pet Food Industry
This manufacturer of dog and cat food connected several lines of packaging to monitor in real-time the weight of treats and of food vertical bags that came out of the packaging line.
Thanks to connectivity—the scale’s database where unit weight measurements are stored—supervisors can visualize in real-time the quantities (in KG) of giveaway per SKU and the overall rate of giveaway (%) per product.
It's possible to set alerts to warn when the fixed weights exceed the standard established by the company. Supervisors can then direct the effort of their team to quickly fix the situation.
Reducing Giveaway in the Confectionery Sector
This chocolatier produces single 75 gram packs of chocolate-covered almonds for a high-volume retail chain. By connecting the balance at the end of the production line (packaging step) the manufacturer can now observe in real-time the weights of the units produced and adjust the process when bags are systematically overweight compared to the established standards.
The savings in raw materials, the increase in equipment capacity and the optimization of the workforce that resulted from implementing the TileBoard Giveaway Suite allowed the manufacturer to offer a very high quality product at a highly competitive price.
Reducing Giveaway in the Meat Industry
This meat processor cuts carcasses in different parts that are labeled "fixed weight" or "variable weight" before they are transported to different packaging areas in the plant. The distributed elements are then recorded at different stages of the transformation so that the algorithms can report the "giveway" on the pieces labeled "fixed weight".
With all data recorded, the Giveaway Suite automatically sorts the data, separates the information from the variable weight pieces, records, and compiles the data associated to the fixed weight items.
Since the carcasses are weighed on arrival, it is easy to compare the fixed weights of finished products with the initial measurement of raw materials and thus ensure that the rate of giveaway is as acceptable as possible. Alerts can also be programmed to warn managers of any consistent excess compared to the tolerance limits for fixed weight items. Supervisors can then quickly mobilize the teams to bring the giveaway back to the standard.
Reduce Overproduction in 4 Simple Steps
The key to success in reducing giveaway in a manufacturing context can be summed up in 4 simple steps:
- Collect production data in real-time to get an accurate picture of the situation
- Visualize the combined data in a dashboard software to quickly see the upward trends
- Set standards by weight (KG) or percentage (giveway rate) and schedule alerts to be informed quickly of a variation
- Use digital tools for continuous improvement to monitor giveaway in real-time and set up action plans to reduce it to its simplest form.
Here are some examples of tiles that keep a real-time eye on key performance indicators that can help reduce giveaway.
To see a demonstration of the GiveAway Suite of the TileBoard dashboard app, make an appointment today with one of our smart factory experts.
