"We view ourselves as a health care company for animals," says Dodd Corby, Vice President of Operations at SmartPak in Plymouth, MA. "We need to provide a very high level of quality control for our products, equal to human foods, so metal detection has become an important part of our quality control plan."
To make sure the bags of dog food they package are metal-free, SmartPak relies on a CEIA drop-through metal detector from Heat and Control. Corby reports that the CEIA, integrated with an Ishida CCW-RS multihead weigher (also supplied by Heat and Control), "has been operating for over two years and we have experienced no downtime due to either the metal detector or scale."
To make sure the bags of dog food that SmartPak packages are metal-free, they rely on a CEIA drop-through metal detector integrated with an Ishida CCW multihead weigher.
Corby's search for a metal detector was not unusual. Since metal detection was a new field to him, he discussed his application with several of his vendors to learn who they used, and then attended a Pack Expo show to narrow a list of top suppliers. "The Heat and Control staff at the show was very knowledgeable about CEIA equipment for my application. I saw a unit in action on the show floor and liked its small footprint, easy to understand operator controls, and its ability to interface with my vertical bagger."
"The Ishida and CEIA system has allowed us to increase efficiency by 100%," - Dodd Corby, VP, Operations.
That introduction to CEIA led to a purchase, and for over two years "the equipment has been great," says Corby. "It has performed exactly the way they said it would and has exceeded our expectations in terms of machine uptime and producing a quality product."
The combination Ishida/CEIA system has, according to Corby, "been a game changer for us. We offer dog food in custom doses with weights that are very close to each other. We needed precision to within 1 gram, and the Ishida scale has delivered. We know that the custom-dosed pack is exactly what the customer ordered, no more, no less. And the speed has allowed us to increase our efficiency by over 100%."
Product quality means everything to SmartPak. "From the time we put our Heat and Control system into production we have had zero complaints about incorrect dosing or metal contamination. We've got the right equipment for the job."
