Doran Scales Inc. (United States) - Sauce Manufacturer Cooks up $10,800 Savings with Doran's 2200.

The Challenge:

Automatic Batching and Formulation that Provides Control, and Accuracy.

A manufacturer of spaghetti and other cooking sauces turned to Doran for a solution to increase the accuracy, accountability, and management oversight of their automatic batching. They were using an older process control indicator which relied on the mixing operator to manually key in the target weights for each ingredient to be automatically dispensed. This company realized that the recipes were not being followed, batch consistency varied considerably from batch to batch, and inventory usage always was incorrect. As a result, the company lost hundreds of dollars a month due to bad batches that were either thrown out or sold as seconds.

The Solution:

The Doran 2200 Digital Weight Indicator with Relays and Ethernet Option:

• Scale memory to store batch recipes and target weights. These recipes are password protected so the correct entry of target weights is no longer dependent on the mixing operator.
• Existing recipes may be modified and new ones created by using the Doran Dimension scale setup program and communicating to the 2200B over their computer network.
• The mixing operator presses the Start button and is prompted to enter the product code for the batch to be created and then is prompted for an Employee ID and Batch Lot ID. After this information is entered that batch recipe is recalled from memory and the Doran 2200B automatically measures out the ingredients.
• At the end of the batch, data is automatically sent over the Ethernet network to Doran’s Excelerator Data collection program which creates a detailed batch report and ingredient usage in an Excel™ workbook.

The Return on Investment:

Three Months!

After using this system for one month and tracking the production data to compare to the previous month, the Doran 2200B batch control system increased yield by 1.5%. This small investment resulted in a significant increase in profitability as shown below:

• Increase Yield by: 1.5%
• Number of Batches per Shift: 12
• Average Batch Size in lbs: 500
• Shifts per Day: 2
• Average Product Cost per lb: $0.25

Product Savings in lbs per Year: 93,600.

Total $ Savings per Year: $10,800.

The return on investment for this system was realized in about five months and as a result the net one year affect on profit margin (Total one year savings minus Weighing Equipment and Installation costs) was $8,100!