The installation of Ishida multihead weighers at Vaasan & Vaasan Oy, one of Finland’s leading bakers, has doubled production capacity and reduced giveaway to almost zero.
As Vaasan & Vaasan sought to extend its customer base to other bakeries, wholesalers, caterers and directly to consumers, the management was keen to find a fast and effective method to enhance accuracy, productivity and efficiency to meet increased demand.
Frozen bake-off products have been rapidly growing in popularity across Europe over recent years. As a result, Vaasan & Vaasan soon realised it needed to adapt manufacturing processes to scale-up production.
Following extensive research and evaluation of different counting methods and suppliers, Vaasan & Vaasan installed the Ishida multihead weigher to take advantage of the speeds of its new bagmaker.
The weigher’s ability to count quickly and precisely, combined with specialist training provided by Ishida, has ensured smooth integration into Vaasan & Vaasan’s production and packing processes.
Comments Vaasan & Vaasan technical manager Juha Eronen: “As demand for our bake-off products increased, we soon realised that our old labour-intensive system was not equipped to provide the capacity needed. Also, as our customer base changed, cartons were no longer an appropriate form of packaging so we looked for more efficient alternatives.
Ishida’s multihead weighing system has allowed us to step up weighing speeds in line with the bagmaking capacity and benefit from new economies of scale. Our daily output has increased from around 22 to 45 tonnes/day. More astonishingly, the weighing process is 99.7% accurate, reducing wastage to near zero, compared with a giveaway of 15% using our old system. We are delighted with the results.”
Since the installation of the first Ishida multihead weigher, Vaasan & Vaasan noted significant savings in manpower and product giveaway as well as improvements in customer satisfaction. This led the company to purchase another multihead weigher from Ishida, and Vaasan & Vaasan now operates five production lines and two packing stations for its bake-off products.