Piovan: Optimising feeding and dosing

Suppliers of feeding and dosing equipment suitable for compounding applications are aiming to provide processors with more performance for their money, with improved accuracy in hardware and more sophisticated software for supervision and control high on the list of enhanced features.

The big difference that will be seen in the future of feeding systems is not just the ability for moving pellets from one place to another, says Piovan, but having the capability to collect data and integrate that in the context. The Italian company says it has created a complete ecosystem that includes devices for the automatic distribution of materials for feeding, tracking of material consumption, quality control and plant supervision. This system covers the process from the very beginning, where raw materials enter into the customer’s production facility.

Its latest innovation is a new handheld logging device. Said to be more than a simple barcode reader, it incorporates a proprietary Piovan app to guide the operator step-by-step during the loading procedure of the raw material, in what is intended to be a fool-proof process.

The overall system is complete with a set of visual indications and with storage devices that include electric locks in order to avoid mistakes and to interact with operators. “In this way, there is no more risk of mixing different materials or to use the wrong resin,” says Piovan. “The managing of the storage is optimised and always updated without the risk of stock breaches and without untraced materials batches.”

The company’s Winfactory 4.0 supervising system collects data and oversees everything. Its material tracking tool makes it possible to track each batch of raw material through to its final destination.