One of Australia’s largest family owned producer, packer and marketer of fresh produce has a reknowned reputation for quality and consistency, and are always seeking new and innovative methods to raise the bar.
As part of their rigorous QA program, they identified scope for improvement in their mushroom picking operations.
With state of the art spawn laboratories and the latest in growing environment measurement and control, they identified an opportunity to move away from their current process of manually recording the pick weights, adopting a more effective method of automatically logging weight data during the picking stage from food scales.
Utilising A&D Australasia’s waterproof FS-15Ki trade approved scales with RS232 serial output, local A&D Australasia partner Able Scales implemented a precise and cost effective method of automatically capturing every finalised pack weight and was easily integrated into the company’s own grading software.
With one simple button press, the pickers are able to log weight, time and date and the information is directly fed into the customer’s grading system for further processing.
The Objectives are significant:
- Logging the data facilitates accurate weight records, reducing operator error.
- With payment based on picking productivity, digital data capture eliminates potential disputes.
- By allocating logged data to specific pickers, the company is able to monitor productivity rates by batch and by individual operator.
- Systems are easily supported by their local scale service provider.
Not resting on their laurels, these leaders in the fresh produce space continue to establish best practice and innovation; maximising yields and reducing costs, whilst maintaining the highest quality standards. A&D Australasia were proud to be a key part of this success story with yet another innovative weighing solution.