Smurfit Kappa Van Mierlo in Belgium, specializes in the development and production of offset printed, cardboard packaging. Cardboard waste occurs in different stages of the production process: when setting up the machines, during folding and gluing, or at quality control. Even materials that do not reach their quality standards are separated and removed.

An accurate picture of waste flows

How does it work? The Jungheinrich EFG 216 forklift truck picks up a container with a known tare weight. The indicator display may show: L01, tare weight 50 kg. The container is loaded with materials from packaging products. The weight in the display goes up. The iForks wireless scale both weighs the container and transmits the weight data to the ERP system via wireless connection. The data can be monitored on an office PC, in ‘PC Read It’, showing  exactly how much waste is produced on each production line. Wim Cools: ‘We capture waste flow weight data per production step, per day, and we link them to the order volume in production that day. The goal of weighing waste flows is to accurately monitor those flows and to measure the effect of improvement measures that we implement.”

Waste is a lost cost, so it’s all the more important to keep waste production as low as possible. This can be monitored by using weight information. By weighing all waste flows and by presenting the data, we create awareness. Together we try to reduce the mountain of waste as much as possible.

Next to iForks, Smurfit Kappa van Mierlo still weighs on a fixed floor scale. But the advantages of iForks over a floor scale are so significant, that Smurfit has decided to scrap the floor scale and order more iForks.