How Weighing Supports Lean Production - METTLER TOLEDO

How Weighing Supports Lean Production

Smart weighing solutions can help reduce overproduction and quality issues, while maximizing punctuality in your production. Tackle the complications of wastage and read how high-quality weighing systems can minimize costs.

Lean Weighing
Lean Weighing

How Weighing Supports Lean Production
Lean Weighing

Waste in discrete manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is a process-management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System. It defines seven wastes to be avoided in a modern, efficient production process.

When manufacturing thousands of discrete parts and components, it’s difficult to continuously maintain lean production. Products need to be precisely manufactured, stored and packaged without unnecessary transports. While parts and components differ among factories where they were produced, the typical wastes found in discrete manufacturing environments are quite similar. For each waste, there often is a strategy to reduce or eliminate its effect on a company. With precise, reliable and fast weighing, you can use your company’s optimization potential and eliminate the root causes of common sources of waste.

How Weighing Supports Lean Production
Lean Weighing

Overproduction

One of the most impactful issues of manufacturing is overproduction. When manufacturing on a contract basis, any piece that is produced too much adds up to additional costs. Often, inaccurate counts of molding or extrusion machines cause problems. Weighing production output at the end of your production line can significantly contribute here by helping you to know when to start or stop a machine. Weighing instruments simply count all the parts coming down the conveyor belt or directly at the molding or extrusion machine. This saves you from producing too much and makes verifying stock quantities much easier.

Unnecessary inventory

Too many parts and components or stock result in high storage costs and lead times. To save your customer from wrong inventory counts, use scale-assisted packing. Fill your shipments while placed on a scale to avoid under- or overfilling. The colorWeight® backlight indicates the filling level with an easy-to-understand bar graph. This not only makes the process of packaging more accurate, but also speeds it up and prevents misreadings of weighing results. Additionally, scales are able to deliver labels right on the spot. There is no need for an extra PC or workstation to create documentation. This saves time and inventory costs.

Defects and rework

Scales are a simple method for avoiding costly recalls due to damaged or incomplete products. Place a product on a scale or weigh module and check against a preset target. This allows you to quickly and reliably identify out-of-spec products in manual or automated processes.