Conveying innovation
September 1st 2007

Most of the manufacturing industry has been rationalised with a major trend toward cutting operational costs, yet having larger plants that can be operated by fewer people. Conveyor technology has played a crucial part in supporting this trend.

The commitment to innovation and development by suppliers has allowed processors to realise their ambitious production targets

Twenty years ago, a lot of the handling equipment on the market at the time was poorly designed, badly controlled and very inefficient. However, modern processing lines now benefit from the developments made by conveyor and system integration specialists. Equipment has been re-designed, engineered and adapted to provide total turnkey solutions, enabling companies to efficiently handle and package lines at a much quicker rate while minimising health and safety and production line downtime. Conveyor systems are also being integrated with other processing equipment like reject systems, ensuring quality of products is assured.

Today many conveyors are made from stainless steel, making them robust, aesthetically pleasing and they are not susceptible to corrosion like the old carbon steel conveyors, thus minimising time and the costs from regular maintenance requirements.

In virtually every industry, conveyors are being used daily, however, conveyors have changed, they are now expected to perform a variety of tasks and keep up with the ever-increasing demands of the manufacturing environment. No longer are they needed just to transport a product from A to B, but now must carry out a number of additional functions.

Reject systems are now becoming fully mechanically and electrically integrated into the conveyor system. These units can efficiently remove faulty products "on-line" without interrupting the flow of good products. This reject unit can be interfaced with any existing production line inspection or quality guarantee system, such as barcode readers, scanners, check weighers and weigh fillers, enabling increased production line integrity without compromising on production.

Running at the high speeds required for modern manufacturing plants, the easy programmable vision system verifies individual camera images against pre-set criteria from a variable datum position, to the finest detail. The latest vision systems are compact and are able to monitor and reject the visual abnormalities undetectable to the naked eye.

Conveyors are now increasingly designed for health and hygiene. It is essential they can be cleaned rapidly using harsh chemicals. This coupled with health and safety has always been a problem, however, this has been eliminated by using the latest conveyor innovation.

At Robert Wiseman's Droitwich Spa dairy, one of the most efficient production facilities of its type in the UK, Isoma, the Midlands based conveyor system and specialist machine manufacturer, was responsible for installing every filling line and empty bottle delivery system at the site. The Droitwich site benefits from the innovative Isoma dry floor Trough Conveyor system which overcomes the age-old problem of 'in place cleaning' of standard open bottomed slat conveyor systems. Its robust, continuously welded and watertight stainless steel trough ensures all spillage, such as product, lubrication and cleaning fluids, are securely contained throughout the length of the conveyor, alleviating the chances of the operator slipping on the wet floor.

This conveyor also benefits from automatically adjustable guide rails that move to a preset position in order to guide the various bottle size widths along with automatic pre-selection of conveyor speeds for optimum line efficiency throughout the whole speed range. The automatic guide rails mean that changing product sizes does not incur any downtime.

As an essential tool within any new or existing line or machine redevelopment is a simulation package. The latest simulation system can take into account every aspect of actual production, such as failures and efficiencies, enabling the system to produce meaningful real time data. This data is correlated to prove machinery speeds, personnel levels, shift patterns, best layout criteria, conveyor lengths and 'what if scenarios'.

Every aspect of conveyor performance is charted including efficiency, availability, knock on effects, shift and waiting time.

From the simulation results it is very clear and easy to calculate if an investment in certain higher value conveyor systems is needed.

The future is very exciting for forwardthinking suppliers who are prepared to work closely with system integrators. By developing innovative efficient machinery in tandem with the manufacturing industry, there is still scope to continue to develop conveyors, which will reduce operational costs and staff while increasing productivity.