Soloweigh Increases Production at Glanbia

Customer Statement:

Mossie McNamara, IT Manager for Glanbia says:
“We are very pleased to have selected Riteweigh as our weighbridge system supplier at Ballyragget. The weighbridge operation is critical to our business for capture of load weight transactions and as the trigger to our quality systems for load validation prior to reception and processing. The installation was efficiently done in a very short timeframe and the day-to-day operation, handling approx 500 loads per day at peak milk season, has been trouble free”.

Business Background

Glanbia PLC is an international nutritional solutions and cheese group, headquartered in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Glanbia Food Ingredients Ireland (FII) is the largest dairy ingredients business in the country, with a milk pool of over 1.4 billion litres annually, processing it into butter, cheese, milk proteins and whey derivatives. Glanbia’s Ballyragget facility is the largest integrated dairy site in Europe, processing 20% of the Irish milk pool and 40% of the Irish whey pool.

Business Requirement

To provide an easy to use driver operated weighbridge system that can integrate with Glanbia’s back office management systems and provide real time information on bulk milk loads entering and exiting the facility. Glanbia wanted to introduce a strict quality control system using milk sample and bar code technology to record antibiotic tests conducted on each incoming milk load. An important requirement is to ensure that peak season milk deliveries to the site be processed quickly and eliminate incoming traffic jams upon entering and exiting the facility. During the peak milk season over 500 individual milk tankers need to be processed over the weighbridge per day. Automating this process has enabled Glanbia to accept increased volumes of bulk milk into their processing facility.

Solution Provided

Riteweigh supplied and designed an automated; driver operated weighing system that would allow the weighing process to be completed in no more than 15 seconds per truck load, ensuring quick throughput. The hardware supplied consisted of two fully automated truck driver kiosks mounted outdoors at truck cab height at both entrance and exit weighbridges. In addition, a combination of traffic barriers and proximity sensors were installed to control traffic, ensure automatic zeroing of weighbridge display between loads and confirm truck position on the weighbridge deck.

The driver operated kiosks use transflective touch screen technology making it easy to read even on the brightest day. The driver operated kiosk includes an integrated barcode reader and thermal printer for load confirmation and hard copy printout. The driver pulls up beside the automated system and swipes his key fob to provide an ID of the tanker arriving. The driver also scans a barcode that is attached to a sample he has taken from the tank of milk he has collected to check for antibiotics. When complete, the weighing information and antibiotic testing are registered on the system and the barrier rises. The driver enters the facility and brings the scanned sample to the laboratory for assessment. If the sample is clear of antibiotics, the driver is then instructed to discharge the load into the designated discharge bay. After the contents of the lorry are emptied, the driver proceeds towards the weighbridge where it can exit the facility. The tanker drives onto the weighbridge, swipes his key fob at the automated system to ID the tanker. The system weighs the truck, which completes the weighing sequence and then prints a docket and lifts the barrier to allow the driver to exit the facility.