Ingredient Management Solutions
Bulk Material Handling & Process Equipment
Whether you’re working with powders, granules, pellets or liquids, how you handle your bulk materials always determines the quality of your final product. At HorizonPSI, we understand the benefits of a well-managed ingredient receiving and handling solution and the headaches that can occur when materials get mismanaged.
When your process demands it, our solutions account for food safety requirements, recipe complexity issues, consistency concerns and contamination risks. In many cases, having the right blend of materials is the only way to ensure your product has the consistency, durability and effectiveness you require. Our job is to protect your employees, products and brand. After all, our business is your business.
Intelligent Ingredient System
Receiving Solutions
The way you receive materials and ingredients may require a variety of bulk process equipment and solutions, from trucks and railcars to bulk bags and small bags on pallets. Regardless of which you use, maintaining raw ingredient integrity is important. Different materials require different types of receiving solutions to ensure this happens. Keeping track of how these materials are received and where they’re stored is also important and helps ensure you can always trace them back to their origin.
At HorizonPSI, designing systems and components to optimize your material receiving process is just the beginning of our Intelligent Ingredient System approach to ingredient management and bulk material handling. Maintaining accurate inventory counts and sources, as well as, maintaining material integrity are incorporated into our process designs for raw ingredient receiving. Addressing contamination, exposure and pre-process staging for all ingredients introduced to your process are part of our analysis when designing a new system or adapting a process to changes in your products or materials.
Ingredient Tracking Solutions
Recording the materials you receive and where they are stored, as part of an overall inventory control system, ensures you know the origin of the ingredients you use. Accessing those materials for production and tracking those ingredients throughout your process is the second step of our Intelligent Ingredient System approach to ingredient management.
HorizonPSI can design an automated lot tracking routine for your process. We utilize RFID tag, barcode or QR code technology to integrate into your existing inventory system, or can design an inventory management routine with an automated ingredient tracking plan. You can’t always eliminate the risk of a product recall, but ingredient tracking can certainly help you greatly reduce the impact to your business.
Recipe Management Solutions
All processes start with a recipe, formulation, blend or compound. No matter what you call it, the approach we take to managing and reproducing it is the same. Flexibility and automation are important for reliable recipe execution and key to long-term ingredient management success.
As part of your overall ingredient management plan, incorporating an ingredient matrix into your process helps with formulating multiple recipes and the inclusion of the right major, minor and micro ingredients. As the third step of HorizonPSI’s Intelligent Ingredient System approach to ingredient management and bulk material handling, automating the internal storage source and transfer to the weighing and feeding point are all incorporated into the recipe management process.
In many cases, it’s the least produced product or least used ingredient that stands in the way of complete automation. At HorizonPSI, we understand your current recipe management needs, account for all major, minor and micro ingredients, and help you plan for future recipe expansion.
Weighing and Feeding Solutions
Having a reliable and repeatable bulk material handling process is essential to your business. HorizonPSI's batching and continuous mixing solutions utilize ingredient inventory and tracking intelligence solutions as well as a recipe matrix to provide both the accuracy and flexibility you need. We offer customized recipe management controls to regulate the introduction of ingredients into the processing line and modify the feeder sequencing based on your recipe or campaign. Load cells, flexible bin or RIBC configurations, feeder sequencing, easy clean components and flexible recipe logic help HorizonPSI provide batching and continuous mixing solutions for a variety of industries.
Batch Systems
Batch systems are most appropriate for lower production rates. They are suited for intermittent production and appropriate for frequent product changeovers. Bad lots are also easily identified. In processes that require many ingredients, batch blending is the most appropriate option as it lowers the number of feeders required. Getting the most out of your batching solution often depends on automation that manages the blending of all major, minor and micro ingredients.
Configurable for a single source system, or multiple sources and/or destinations, HorizonPSI can help you:
- Create and configure flexible batch sequences
- Create and manage recipes
- Create and manage campaigns
- Automatically collect detailed batch and process data
- Monitor, report and manage ingredient usage
- Monitor, report and control production
Weigh and Convey Systems
Weigh and Convey (WC), as well as Convey and Weigh (CW) systems, are capable of producing any size batch. They rely on the process flow to determine the weigh and feed points. We can position multiple feeders arranged in-line or radially to produce a complete multi-ingredient conveying and weighing system. Each feeder runs simultaneously and fills autonomously, resulting in compact sizing of individual units or complete systems. These systems provide flexibility in design, material traceability, easy maintenance and sanitation, as well as, expandability.
Gravity Down Flow Systems
Top Down or Gravity Down-Flow systems gather materials above a mixer prior to processing. Major materials or ingredients are conveyed to receivers while other materials, in small or bulk bags, are hoisted up to unloading stations above the mixer. A volumetric screw feeder will meter appropriate contents from the receivers or unloading stations into scale hoppers above the mixer according to preconfigured recipes. Material will discharge from the scale hoppers into the mixer based on time and/or temp which are included recipe parameters. This process provides for a high degree of accuracy because gravity is used to ensure all of the ingredients are emptied into the processing system and are not hung up in transfer.
Loss-In Weigh Continuous Mixing Systems
A Loss-In-Weight continuous process utilizes automated loss-in-weight feeders to continuously add material to a process. A variety of materials can be sent from the feeders to a receiver, mixer or directly to an extruder for processing. As materials are combined and processed, the loss-in-weight feeder calls for more material and refills are fast and efficient, minimizing the time the feeders are in volumetric mode. This maintains the highest feeder accuracy possible.
