Monthly Archives: April 2017

Our LabelBank/DataBank Rapid Bar Code Labeling System has gone into many interesting spots, but for Whitewater Processing Company, a turkey processing company located in Harrison, OH, it can almost be considered a holiday miracle. It was installed quickly by Associated Scale, an Authorized Fairbanks Scales Distributor, which meant Whitewater Processing was able to use the new system for the very busy holiday season. Fairbanks also supplied ledger web reporting software, and will be providing annual software support and remote support.

Replacing Whitewater’s handwritten system with the new LabelBank/DataBank solution improved their recording efficiency and increased production output. As an added holiday bonus, it promoted better branding for their products.

Whitewater managers recently gave the system “two thumbs up” after using it to process their holiday production load. The system includes two stations, each with a platform, an Intermec PC43d label printer, and Fairbanks Scales’ FB4000 Solution Series Instruments running LabelBank.

Associated Scale installed DataBank in a network configuration on a networked PC, along with ledger web reporting. Associated Scale also provided customized scanning and reporting software for the PC that added features to the Fairbanks Scales web reporting software. Whitewater had extremely positive things to say about Associated Scale’s service, and also praised the reliability of the Fairbanks solution.

The LabelBank/DataBank Rapid Bar Code Labeling System is an Ethernet-ready turnkey system for industrial bar code labeling, which combines easy to navigate factory-installed bar coding software with a networkable touch screen instrument and a high-speed industrial thermal bar code printer. Optional software allows users to custom format labels. The system offers virtually unlimited product information storage, remarkable data storage and communication capabilities, and a configurable backup.

The graphically-enhanced LabelBank labeling software interface features easy controls and printer communications. LabelBank comes with four commonly used box label formats designed to meet most bar code labeling requirements for boxes or pallets.

Counting scales are an essential piece of technology for any business selling a large amount of product at once. When counting large amounts of small items to sell (such as nails or screws) it’s important, to be able to count them quickly and accurately. This is where counting scales come in. To count each individual piece manually takes much too long and is a massive waste of resources. With a counting scale, all of this waste is erased. As their name implies, counting scales count by weight. By weighing a known number of parts and entering that known number into the scale, the scale can divide for the precise weight of each piece, which is used to determine the accurate count of subsequent weight measurements of like parts.

The Problem

Despite their obvious superiority over other counting methods, counting scales do have one small issue that can cause inefficiency: individual items of the same kind may have slightly different weights.  Even products that are mass produced, like nails or screws, can have subtle differences in composition and size, which, of course, results in tiny differences in weight. This can lead to inaccurate piece weights if the number of pieces used to determine the piece weight is too small. If the piece weight for a product is inaccurate, all subsequent weights recorded by the scale could be slightly off. This effect is negligible when counting small numbers of pieces, such as 10 nails. But when counting hundreds or thousands of pieces of one product, these slight differences in weight can make a significant difference.

The Solution

The problem described above can be solved by using a larger sample size. Basic statistics states that the difference between pieces contributes less to the overall average when more pieces are measured at once. A large sample size reduces the effect of non-uniform weights between pieces, which ensures a more accurate piece count and in turn reduces overall counting error.

Using a large sample size to find your piece weight for any product can take a long time, however, as manual counting is still needed initially. This is where Fairbanks Scales’ technology enters the picture.

Fairbanks Scales’ Omega Counting Scale

Products like Fairbanks Scales’ Omega Counting Scale (OCS) and Product Look Up (PLU) software make using large sample sizes feasible. Our scales can store information electronically; piece count weights can be measured once and stored, rather than weighed again each time a new count must be taken. This drastically reduces the time needed for each count. Our Omega Counting Scale can store hundreds of piece weights with the help of the PLU manager software, so every product and its associated information can easily be accounted for.

It all comes down to the larger sample size, which is only a practical solution when using modern counting scales such as one of Fairbanks Scales’. Once a company can consistently use these larger sample sizes in their measurements, their accuracy will be drastically improved, and overall efficiency will be increased. As long as the Fairbanks Scales Omega Counting Scale is in the picture, counting inefficiencies need no longer cause stress or worry.