Since the early 1950s, the push for automation within feed manufacturing facilities has been driven by the need to decrease labor and increase production and accuracy. But, in today’s world, that isn’t enough. We continue to see external forces, such as the push for traceability across the supply chain, start to play a role in automation innovation within the feed industry.
Because these forces have a direct impact on the success of the facility and its ability to operate at peak performance, these three advancements can help alleviate challenges that arise:
Inventory Management & Visibility
Streamlined Order Processing
Data & Reporting
Inventory Management & Visibility
With volatile commodity prices and the high volume running through facilities daily, having an accurate inventory is essential to maximizing the peak performance of the facility. At a minimum, operators must be able to see what is currently live in bins. Having a streamlined and seamless integration between truck scale, the mill system, and the accounting software, helps eliminate both time lags as well as information being lost. Investing in a program to link all programs together will help mitigate challenges around inventory and increase the visibility in your facility.
Streamlined Order Processing & Prediction
Why do animals need more feed on Friday and especially on holidays? Everyone struggles with balancing out production needs and running at full capacity every day of the week. Order processing and prediction through bin scale readings, order projections, farm bin level projections, and online ordering provide more context and awareness for the feed office to identify and manage through capacity and production needs. Investing in tools to support this could look like decreased over time, more efficient production, and in turn, more content employees.
Data & Reporting
Data is only powerful if captured and exported in a concise and relevant way for those reading the information. The ability to identify what is the bottle neck of a facility may influence business decisions on where to make enhancements at the facility level. Performance reports can be emailed directly to an email inbox daily for remote monitoring and diagnostics of the facility. Investing in software to help capture all the data across a facility and have it in an easily accessible format is essential to reaching peak performance in the industry today.
We will continue to create new and improved solutions to address these external forces. But above all, these solutions must be simple and reliable to ensure they are practical for implementation and provide a return on investment for our customers. To see a demo or learn more about our capabilities, please fill out the form above or call us at 507-728-8214.