Stock control for reeled labels by weighing

The Viper scale from Mettler Toledo provides an accurate and easy way of counting labels left on reels, by use of an accurate counting scale with built-in database of product information

Established in 1898, Robert McBride is a multinational business with a turnover of over GBP500million.

Operating out of fifteen factories in six countries, it specialises in private label and contract manufacturing of laundry, household, cleaning and personal care products.

The site in Bradford, which manufactures personal care products, faced problems in its label store.

The department struggled to determine the number of labels left on part used reels as each reel had to be weighed and the number of remaining labels manually calculated - a time consuming and often inaccurate process.

The company has used Mettler Toledo as an equipment supplier for many years and has its equipment in other areas of the site as well as at sites across the UK.

Vincent Pemberton, label store co-ordinator, says "we already had Mettler Toledo scales installed in our production area which meet all our requirements, so this prompted us to again choose the company as our supplier." Steve Littlewood, Section Leader, adds: "I originally contacted Martin Bennett at Mettler Toledo who was very helpful.

After a site visit and with Martin's knowledge of test/weighing equipment and my knowledge and experience of our business, we selected the equipment as being cost effective and meeting our current and future needs".

After further discussions with the Robert McBride site in Middleton - which uses the same system to combat this problem - the Viper scale range was chosen as Vincent explains: "we chose the ViperMB SC 15 LA for a number of reasons - we wanted a scale that could accurately weigh and count labels that weighed only 0.01g as well as a scale that could store up to 1500 individual codes.

It also needed to be user friendly and easy to input and extract information from and the ViperMB scale offered all of this".

In addition a printer was required to record all the data for future reference.

"We decided on the RSP42 printer so we could crosscheck everything weighed on the scale against our SAP system.

The printer is very simple to operate and our experience with the printer in other applications has shown it to be very reliable" adds Vincent.

The Viper scale installed offers efficient piece counting and convenient data capture combined with great flexibility and outstanding precision.

It has numerous features including memory for 1500 records, barcode reading and writing capabilities, graphical display and programmable function keys - meeting the company's specific requirements.

Three RS232 and a PS2 keyboard interface come as standard and there's an option of exchanging the third RS232 interface for a second scale input.

In addition the rugged design makes this scale ideal for industrial environments.

The new equipment is used to weigh labels left over from the production area to accurately determine the number of labels remaining on a reel.

"We send reels of labels to the production area which are applied to the various bottles of personal care products.

Any label reels left over from a process order are returned to the label store where they need to be accurately weighed to calculate the remaining labels on the individual reel so they can be added to the stock.

If accuracy is not achieved then other production lines could stop due to lack of labels" says Vincent.

The new system has dramatically improved processes as information is now stored on a database which has made the process much simpler as well as eliminating errors created by manually inputting data.

The scale provides an accurate and easy way of counting labels left on reels by use of an accurate counting scale with built-in database of product information.

"We are now confident in the amount of labels on a part reel and in our stock levels.

This accuracy has prevented production downtime due to label shortages and has had a positive effect on our label stock accuracy".

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