Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System

SG Systems’ groundbreaking V5 Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System helps eliminate inaccurately weighed masterbatches, leading to significantly reduced material giveaway and offers a significant return on investment for most plant operations.

Squeezed by rising commodity cost and price-conscious consumers – masterbatch, PVC, plastic & rubber compounders, and other chemical manufacturers are examining their internal batch weighing processes to minimize wasted sets, reducing rework and inefficiency.

By avoiding operator error with advanced batch and lot tracking systems, some of the most proactive producers are eliminating “out of specification” batches to save from 2-6% on raw material cost and are typically achieving a return on investment (ROI) within 3-6 months.

Today’s operators and more prone to making mistakes on the plant floor, mainly when temporary labor is used or less well trained operators are employed. When operators over or under scale, improperly set bulk dispensing equipment, forget to hand add an ingredient, or mix the batch for the wrong length of time, the batch can become a total loss. These sorts of problems can result in unnecessary scrap, inventory losses, time consuming rework and inventory shortages that stop production, and can cost significant amounts of money and purchasing problems.

It is particularly difficult for management to troubleshoot problems on the plant floor when operators are asked to create paper records of production operations. These records are usually inaccurate, not just because operators must interrupt their other tasks to create them, but simply because of human nature and a reluctance to create records in real time.

Eliminating Operator Errors from Batches & Formulations

Helping to reduce waste, troubleshoot more effectively, and provide full lot traceability, an advanced batch and lot-tracking system called SG V5 Masterbatch Weighing Scale System is available from SG Systems – a Dallas, TX-based leader in cost effective batch control, lot traceability and production safety solutions.

the SG Systems V5 Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System is a personal computer-based automation solution that can be interfaced to PLC based compound control systems on the production floor. It is based on the premise that the only way to prevent operators from making mistakes is to confirm and verify everything they pre-scale and add into the mixers, thereby removing their ability to deviate from the set recipe. With the product installed, operators cannot make a batch that does not meet the recipe specification, in terms of required compound proportions, as well as mixing time, speed, and mix temperature.

After a company loads their Compound Formulations into the product’s recipe database, the formulations are sent to weighing control stations on the production floor as needed to meet daily production schedules (or over a time frame specified). It is now more common for SG Systems to draw data from existing ERP and Cost Accounting Systems to eliminate double handling of data.

The V5 Masterbatch Weighing Scale System software then prompts the operator step by step through the formulation on a display at the control station, which is can be connected to the mixer, necessary scales, temperature probes, and other equipment.

For the minor and micro compounds which are hand weighed or counted (non-weighed), industrial touch screens connect to weighing scales and balances, label printers and barcode scanners to allow the Compound Formulation to be weighed within target zone, enforcing +/- tolerance levels to ensure accuracy (set by management).

Eliminating Plant Floor Formulation Errors

Lot tracking for raw material traceability is also addressed by the SG V5 Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System. This is important for production safety in the event of a product recall (often 10-15 years or greater in the plastics industry).

The V5 Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System gives manufacturers the tools to track raw material lots to specific batches, and to quickly identify other batches made with common lot numbers. Batch numbers created by the mixer can be automatically passed through to the end of line terminal (designed to connect to label printers, inkjet coders and other identification systems) to create a link between the mix and the finished product if required. This tracking number is then tied to the shipping operation to create a complete traceability solution.

If you would like to know more about SG Systems and the Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System please feel free to contact our corporate office (214) 819-9570.

Notes about Masterbatch (MB)

Masterbatch is a solid or liquid additive for plastic used for coloring plastics (color masterbatch) or imparting other properties to plastics (additive masterbatch). Masterbatch is a concentrated mixture of pigments and/or additives encapsulated during a heat process into a carrier resin which is then cooled and cut into a granular shape. Masterbatch allows the processor to color raw polymer economically during the plastics manufacturing process.

Alternatives to using masterbatches are buying a fully compounded material or compounding from raw materials on site (which is prone to issues with achieving full dispersion of the colorants and additives, and prone to preparing more material than what is used for the production run). In comparison with pure pigments, masterbatches require more storage space and their lead times are longer.

More information about Masterbatch and it’s original available here

for more information on V5 Traceability and the Masterbatch Weighing & Scanning System, contact SG Systems Global