Flexible Conveyor Design: Reduce Product Loss by 80% with Gentle, Transferless Solutions

While it may not be possible to eliminate product loss entirely, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a goal for every plant engineer. There is constant pressure on production engineers to maintain product quality, reduce costs, and deliver on customer demands. 

In every food production facility, product loss is a major concern. It’s wasted time and resources that the organization will never make up and if any poor quality product makes it to the customer, it’s likely to damage the reputation of the organization.

At SideDrive Conveyor Co., we’ve helped food production facilities reduce product loss by as much as 80% using a transferless, continuous conveyor design. Let’s look at how this is possible, even with fragile applications like an egg conveyor belt or industrial bakery equipment.

Eliminating Transfers with Flexible Conveyor Designs

Traditional designs often use a conveyor-to-conveyor transfer to move items between different production stages and conveyor equipment. These transfers add risk to the production line as it's where most of the product damage and loss occurs. It often leads to accidents like liquids spilling on the conveyor or individual items getting trapped at the transfer mechanism, damaging the products and creating a mess on the conveyor line.

With a continuous, flexible conveyor design, you can eliminate these transfers from the production line altogether, ensuring items move smoothly and gently through the facility. 

A Continuous and Flexible Transferless Conveyor for Reduced Product Loss

The SideDrive Conveyor Co.’s continuous conveyor system remains highly configurable, so you can fit the design into your existing facility to reduce product loss common with traditional conveyor solutions. The more fragile the product, the greater the percentage of loss becomes. A prime example is in egg handling applications. 

Producers commonly experience as much as 10% product damage because of cracking during the routine handling, sanitation, and packaging tasks. One of our customers had a 1-1.5% loss at each transfer point but by using a continuous, transferless conveyor design, they could eliminate each of these losses for improved profitability. 

A side-driven conveyor design enables you to:

• Design a complete conveyor solution that gently moves items through different production and packaging stages
• Fit the new conveyor into existing equipment layouts without needing to make architectural changes to the facility, or moving equipment around 
• Elevate items using a transferless conveyor to reach a processing machine’s entry or discharge points

How the Transferless Conveyor Works

One of the main issues with traditional conveyor systems is the need for transfers from conveyor to conveyor.  Product needs to bridge the gap to make it from conveyor to conveyor.  For some products, this is not an issue, but for others it can lead to product loss risk.  SideDrive eliminates these transfers by creating a continuous belt with drives from the side placed strategically along the length.

Side-driven conveyors use a Intralox 2700 series modular, plastic belt with multiple drives at the points where the belt tension reaches its limit. It can accommodate multiple turns and inclines over the entire system, providing for a single continuous design that remains gentle on all your products.

Design a Transferless Conveying System with SideDrive Conveyor Company

While a transferless conveyor will help reduce product loss, it also increases your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). With greater availability and easier maintenance of the production line, you can increase plant efficiency without adding additional risk to product quality. The modular, open-frame construction makes it an ideal solution for any food production application.

Whether you produce fragile items like eggs or baked goods, our solutions can improve your plant’s operations and reduce the number of rejected products during every shift.

For more information about our transferless conveyor designs, reach out to SideDrive Conveyor Co. today.