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Fresh Food Weigher Casts its Spell at Le Magicien Vert

29/11/2006

The installation of an Ishida Fresh Food Weigher (FFW) at leading French ready meals manufacturer Le Magicien Vert, has replaced a manual packing operation to deliver improved speed and productivity and better working conditions for operators.

Automated weighing is clearly a desirable objective for manufacturers of ready meals, because of its speed, accuracy, consistency and hygiene advantages over manual packing. However, many manufacturers have been prevented from going down this route because their products are sticky and part liquid, part solid in nature.

This was the challenge facing Le Magicien Vert, which produces a range of retailer own-brand fresh and frozen meals, including paella and fricasseed lamb.

Manual packing was slow and labour-intensive, and the repetitive tasks faced by staff involved continual bending and lifting.

The company first carried out tests on a circular multihead weigher, which were promising in terms of improved speeds, but as Site Director Philippe Blanc explains: “This type of multihead weigher was not suitable in terms of product changeovers and did not cope too well with the tendency of the products to bunch together.”

The Ishida solution was a model from its successful Fresh Food Weigher (FFW) range, which has its hoppers arranged in linear tiers. The hoppers are fed by a row of belts that carry the product from the infeed. The weighing machine is designed so that a single operator can comfortably supervise the eight belts, adding or removing product, or swapping product from belt to belt, to maintain an even flow.

The Fresh Food Weigher has raised packing speeds to 35 packs per minute and greatly reduced the amount of manual handing of the food. It has also enabled the company to optimise staffing levels: the entire packing line used to require nine staff and now only needs four, a significant labour cost saving.

Another major benefit for improved productivity has been the marked reduction in work-related musculoskeletal disorders. As Mme Aziza, Shop Floor Manager, states: “Now I am no longer continually bending to pick up the product, something which used to give me back problems. I can move about freely while re-positioning product on the belts. The product feeding is both stress-free and physically far less demanding ”

Product changeovers on the Fresh Food Weigher, which handles up to 25 different recipes each day, take around 15 minutes. The speed is partly due to the ease with which contact parts can be removed and replaced with no need for tools. Another factor is the ‘pit stop’ installed by Ishida next to the weigher, which carries racks of clean, ready-to-switch contact parts including belts and hoppers.

The Fresh Food Weigher has now been operating at Le Magicien Vert for over a year without once causing machine–related downtime or requiring any maintenance whatsoever.

The FFW has raised packing speeds to 35 packs per minute and greatly reduced the amount of manual handing of the food.