Case study of digital transformation of ingredient workshops in nutritional food enterprises

Project Background

Nutritional food production requires formula measurement in grams and milligrams. Raw materials are high-value with minimal tolerance for errors. Traditional batching operations rely on paper-based formulas and manual verification, which commonly bring risks such as material misapplication, weighing deviation and incomplete traceability chain. Any mistake may lead to scrapping of entire batches or even quality incidents.

To improve batching accuracy and process controllability, a nutritional food manufacturer adopted Linmindu MFStage Manual Batching System for the digital upgrade of its batching workshop. A closed-loop full-process management system covering raw material warehousing, batching weighing and feeding verification has been established.

System Composition

The solution consists of software modules and hardware terminals.

• Software Modules: Staging Warehouse Management, Manual Batching, Auto Batching, Feeding Control
• Hardware Deployment: 2 sets of staging warehouse terminals, 2 sets of batching workstations, 2 sets of feeding workstations. All critical operation points in the batching workshop are fully covered.

Solution Highlights

1. One Bag One Code, Full Lifecycle Traceability

A unique identification code will be printed for each bag once raw materials enter the staging warehouse. The code will be automatically invalidated after consumption, preventing repeated reuse of one single code. It ensures accurate raw material consumption and forms a complete and closed traceability chain.

2. Hybrid Manual & Automatic Mode, Cost Reduction & Efficiency Improvement

The system combines manual weighing and automatic feeding. It automatically distinguishes manually weighed materials and auto-discharged materials. While maintaining high batching precision, the overall operational efficiency is greatly enhanced.

3. Feeding Interlock Lock & Access Control

The feeding workstation is electronically interlocked with the mixing tank door. The tank door can only be unlocked after passing verification and meeting defined process conditions. This mechanism effectively prevents wrong feeding and missing feeding.

Workflow

Raw Material Coding → Task Creation → Batching & Weighing → Remaining Material Labeling → Feeding Verification Production planners create daily production schedules on the management platform. The system automatically splits formulas and distributes tasks to on-site terminals. If raw materials remain after batching, the system prints residual material labels automatically to avoid label reuse. Parameters including feeding sequence, feeding interval and weight checking can be configured. The mixing tank stays locked if verification fails.

Benefits

After system implementation, every operation step is logged and fully traceable.

• Higher accuracy of raw material selection and batching precision; fewer human errors and batch rework risks
• Complete and reliable data for quality audit and batch traceability
• Shift workshop management from experience-driven mode to data-driven mode

Linmindu Measurement Technology Co., Ltd. | MFStage Manual Batching System