Yamato Americas

Commercial and Industrial Weighing Scales and Systems

Weighers for Wisconsin Cheese

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Wisconsin is the dairy and cheese state. Wisconsin cheesemakers use about 90% of its milk supply to make more than 2 billion pounds of cheese every year. It has 1,290 licensed cheesemakers–more than any other state and has the country’s most stringent state standards for cheesemaking and overall dairy product quality. Not only does the product quality have high standards, but it’s packaging quality too.

Yamato Weighers for Cheese

To properly package each cheese product requires accurately measured weights by high-end commercial scales and weighers. Yamato, located in a suburb of Milwaukee, WI has over 25 years of industry experience. Its automatic scales have the capacity to handle cheeses of all types including:

  • shredded
  • diced
  • cubed
  • crumbled
  • and many more

Not all scales are equal either. Yamato has the first combination weighers in the industry to receive a 3A-Dairy certification. It is also fully compliant with USDA-Dairy Sanitation Standards.

What makes Yamato’s weigher special is individual collating chutes that prevent the product from spinning, enabling high-speed discharge. Multiple scale options developed specifically for cheese provide high accuracy operation. Other unique functions include:

  • Multipoint discharge scales interfacing perfectly with a multi-fill pouch or tray lines.
  • Auto-Inhibit function allowing for cleaning on the fly and error
    recovery without having to stop the weigher.
  • Programmable Auto Tare monitors product build-up
    in weigh buckets.
  • Staggered Dump eliminating bridging while transferring to
    packaging machinery.

Triplex 3A Series

Yamato has long been a pioneer in the cheese industry. Presenting the first weigher to be 3A certified, the Frontier F524SW-3A triplex weigher offers a 50% increase in speed in the same footprint as existing duplex systems. Fully 3A/USDA/WDA compliant, it provides speeds up to 180 measurements per minute on retail-size shredded cheese applications. Additionally, it incorporates all of the special modifications which have solidified Yamato’s position as the leader in shredded cheese functions. The F524SW-3A uses all of the Yamato advanced software systems to optimize weigher performance for the best speed, accuracy, and efficiency possible.

Contact Us

If you’re a cheese company looking to upgrade your cheese weigher machines, contact us today. We’d love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have.

7 Industries That Use Commercial Scales

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Commercial scales are widely used in the food industry. The proper measurement of food items helps ensure businesses aren’t packaging or selling too little or too much for what they charge. Here are seven food and related industries that need commercial scales.

1. Bakeries

Bakeries use commercial scales to help their ingredients go as far as they can. A mis-measurement of something means an entire batch of an item is spoiled and has to be thrown out. This creates a loss not only in ingredients but also products that would’ve been sold and brought in revenue. Unless a baker is highly experienced and knows how to eye measurements, bakeries need commercial scales to help measure each item.

2. Candy & Confectionaries

Weighing out the various candies for confectionaries can be a task in and of itself depending on the how much of a variety of item is sold. Properly weighing these items guarantees that the consumer is getting a fair amount for what they pay for and that the business isn’t packaging too much and therefore losing revenue. Items like jelly beans, gummy candies, hard chocolates, wrapped or unwrapped candy, licorice, and more are all items a confectionary would use the commercial scale for.

3. Delis & Kitchens

Any deli or meat market is going to have a commercial scale. When you go to your grocery store and purchase deli meat, the worker behind the counter weighs what they shaved or sliced to make sure you’re getting the right amount and to price it correctly. Yamato commercial scales have multiple functions and capacities including portion control, batching and general weighing. Mechanical scales have portion control specifically for carving uniform portions of deli meats and cheeses.

4. Pet

Most people love animals compelling them to adopt a pet or multiple pets at some point in their life, creating a huge industry for pet suppliers. Any dry animal food, which needs to be weighed and packaged requires a commercial scale to do so. Animal products that would be measured out include:

  • Dry dog and cat food
  • Dog bones
  • Pet treats or dry morsels

Pet owners, as much as they love their furry friend(s), know how expensive owning a pet can be and will appreciate getting the right amount of a product when they purchase it for their animal.

5. Seafood

Another food industry, seafood businesses need to weigh their products. Seafood items that might be weighed and measured are:

  • Fish sticks
  • Shrimp, fresh and frozen
  • IQF Salmon and other fish fillets
  • Lobster

Semi-automatic weighers are ideal for fixed weight packaging of lobster tails, fish fillets and other large seafood pieces or fragile products.

6. Meat

A close cousin to seafood, meat is a 52 billion pound industry of which every pound needs to be weighed. Whether it’s shredded, diced, cubed, or in stick form, all kinds of meat are weighed out for proper packaging.

7. Snacks

Every consumer has most likely stopped at a convenience store or gas station to grab a bag of chips or something of the sort to snack on only to find the bag was under filled. Although it’s likely an innocent oversight, it’s no fun for the consumer who ends up with it. Yamato offers various options for snack food weighing applications including potato chips, pretzels, tortilla chips, popcorn and many other “chip” type products. Gentle product handling features are available for delicate snacks, minimizing breakage.

Yamato Scales

If you’re a business in one of these industries, you know how important proper measurement of your product is. Take a look today at the various scales Yamato offers and make sure your business has a top quality scale to help your business provide it’s best service.

3 Ways to Train Employees on Weighing Machines

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If you’re a manufacturer that uses weighing machines like checkweighers or combination weighers, there are three main areas it can be helpful to train your employees on. Even if only a basic understanding, the more knowledgeable your employees are, the better equipped they’ll be to run these weighing machines as well as recognize problems and even fix minor ones. Here are three things to make sure they know that Yamato can help provide training on.

Basic Operation

How to operate a weighing machine may seem obvious to you, but the basic operation is a key element for employees to understand and can include many things. Basic operation is about more than how to operate a weighing machine, it also means an understanding of product distribution and delivery. Employees who have a knowledge of that are better equipped to be able to judge adjustments that may be needed while in production as well as speed and accuracy.

Maintenance

Providing your employees with knowledge about maintenance can help them be able to fix minor problems or be able to determine if an issue requires someone with more specialized skills to address the problem. When it comes to checkweighers and combination weighers some things you could talk to your employees about are:

  • Basic scale construction
  • Basic mechanical principles
  • Basic electrical principles
  • ARCNET and system network
  • AICC and AICC-SE controller, the HMI
  • Actuator principles
  • Troubleshooting
  • Test accessories and practices
  • Routine and preventive maintenance

Advanced Applications

This information may be reserved more for senior employees or anyone you may have on staff to handle problems that come up with the machines. Advanced applications could include:

  • Troubleshooting typical scale problems
  • Running product at different speed and weights
  • Understanding high speed operation (above 120/min)

Employees who do have advanced knowledge about how to run applications and troubleshoot can save you time and money. They can also ensure any problems are resolved quickly rather than hours spent trying to figure something out.

Yamato Training

Yamato provides training on-site at customer facilities for any company who would like their employees to be more educated about the machines they work with. On-site instruction generally consists of 3-4 hours per day of classroom instruction, followed by 3-4 hours of hands-on training. Instruction greater than 8 hours/ day, across several shifts, is available, but not recommended unless more than one instructor is used. Training is also available at the Yamato Technology Center in Mequon, WI. Contact Yamato today to set up a training on-site or at our facility.