- MotionMeter
helps General Mills’ packaging lines run smoothly by detecting
potential equipment
problems on-the-fly.
- "...it didn’t take too many hours of packaging line downtime to pay for the
MotionMeter."
[Excerpt - The
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Doug Flom, associate principal engineer in packaging engineering at General Mills, certainly agrees. Dedicated to the cereals side of the business, Flom has found a way to keep Big G’s high-speed packaging lines running smoothly with the help of a new high-speed digital imaging system that uses slow-motion technology to detect potential equipment problems on-the- fly. Flom uses the
MotionMeter motion-analysis camera system from Redlake MASD to monitor bag-in-box cereal packaging lines running such venerable Big G products as
Cheerios®, Total® and Wheaties®, as well as lines packaging a variety of other products.
Keeping tabs on the many packaging lines and machines at General Mills is a tall order. With more than $13 billion in sales, Big G markets many of the most trusted consumer brands across a wide range of food categories. With the addition of Pillsbury’s businesses to its mix, the company now owns more than 30 brands that each have U.S. retail sales in excess of $100 million. And, each brand requires several packing lines that must run at their peak in order to properly accommodate product demand.
Today, under the watchful eye of the MotionMeter hand-held digital imager, Big G’s machine operators can analyze and capture images of machine functions at high speeds, which allows them to identify problems the naked eye can’t see. Flom says he can determine packaging equipment efficiencies more quickly and easily than ever.
Records 1,000 frames/sec
Designed to help the user play detective, the MotionMeter system can solve a wide range of packaging equipment dilemmas for all sorts of food products. In General Mills’ case, the applications extend from snack foods and cereals to yogurt, cake mixes and everything in between. The digital MotionMeter offers 8-bit monochrome imaging capabilities and a CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor array capable of outputting images with a standard resolution of 292 x 220 pixels. An advanced lateral-overflow-drain antiblooming feature prevents excessive light from getting into any given pixel. Too much light can make an image appear too light, overexposed-looking or ghost-like, Redlake tells PD.
One of a family of slow-motion digital camera systems, the MotionMeter plays recorded frames on its built-in liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, forward or backward, in slow motion and stop motion. The system records images at rates from 50 to 1,000 frames/sec, at up to 4 sec of recording time, for a total of 4,096 frames. According to Redlake MASD, the images can be downloaded to a PC, but the system’s main purpose is more for on-the-spot usage, such as Flom’s. The system has a sensitivity rating of 5 lux (lux is a unit of illuminance as established by the International System of Units, equivalent to 0.00146 kg/sec3) at 250 frames/sec.
Flom points out that it didn’t take too many hours of packaging line downtime to pay for the MotionMeter. “Its portability helped pay it off faster— everything is built in. Unlike earlier cameras that weren’t as portable and cost a lot more, the MotionMeter is about the size of a regular, conventional camera. We also can use it to videotape images as a training tool, educating new personnel on how a machine like a form/fill/seal system, or a sealer, works. When it comes to setting up machinery and timing devices, we put the MotionMeter to work to eliminate all of the guesswork. It tells us exactly what’s going on.”
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