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.
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.
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:
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.
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.