What the load cell really says
No one types a number. The instrument reads the weight, stored with the time to the second.
- stable weight flagged by the instrument
- kilograms and litres together, per product
- fill percentage and free space
EDG Sistemi · Industrial solutions · SI.SCO Series
How much milk came in
and how much is left
The weight of every silo, read three times a second, from delivery to vat.
Supervision and control system for dairy plants
Continuous supervision of the tanks of a dairy plant. Weight comes from the load cells, becomes litres, and every change leaves a line: who, when, how much. What enters from the intake bay and what leaves towards the vats are reconciled every evening.
3readings a second, for each silo
2weighings compared on each delivery
5languages, on screen and in prints
0lines written by hand in the log
Dairy plants and milk centres · Load cells · weighbridge · probes
Purpose
A single view
for all the stored milk
Every silo rests on load cells. The system polls them without stopping, converts weight into litres with the specific gravity of the product and keeps count of what goes in and what goes out. When the weight moves with no operation open, it says so.
Loadings and discharges detected
When the stable weight moves past the threshold of the silo, the system records a loading or a discharge without being told.
- separate thresholds for loading and discharge
- start weight, end weight and difference
- unexpected changes flagged at once
A line for everything that happens
Deliveries, discharges, alarms, overrides and corrections stay written. Prints and summaries come from there.
- search by day, by silo, by supplier
- reports with the company heading
- export to Excel from every list
- Readsthree a second, per silo
- Screen refreshevery second, no reloading
- Silos managedall those on the plant
- Level historytwenty-four hours, seven days
How a day goes
From tankers
to the vats
Milk comes in early in the morning and starts to leave before the deliveries are over. In between there is a silo filling up, a blend that changes and a weight that must never move on its own.
- 01
The tanker arrives
Supplier and silo are chosen. Certificates are checked before opening.
- 02
Discharge
The weight rises and is seen rising. At the end: kilos, litres, temperature.
- 03
The sample is taken
The tube stays tied to those kilos, with fat and protein.
- 04
On to the vat
Discharge is followed by weight: at the kilos asked, it stops.
- 05
The day is closed
Inputs, outputs and stock are compared. What does not add up stays.
Every step leaves its trace
A typical day: 4 deliveries · 25,010 kg in · 13,720 kg out · 2 changes to explainNo step is recorded from memory or at the end of the shift: each line is born when the weight moves.
Weighbridge vs silo
Two instruments
for the same milk
The tanker weighs on the bridge in and out: the difference is what the driver says was delivered. The silo, meanwhile, weighs what really came in. The two numbers are compared on their own, delivery by delivery.
Toleranceset as a percentage; below that threshold the delivery closes with no one stepping in
Out of tolerancethe line stays open until someone writes the reason: it cannot be deleted
Questions, in ordertanker fully emptied, milk split into two silos, discharge open at once, cell to calibrate
Month enddifferences above tolerance go into the supplier statement, with their explanation
Weighbridge required
The system talks to the bridge indicator as it talks to the silo cells. Without a bridge this page is not used and everything else works the same.
What is found
A tanker not fully emptied, a leaking hose, a cell out of calibration. These are kilos otherwise found at month end, when the figures no longer add up.
The thirty screens
Thirty screens
one for each job
The pages of the system, grouped by job: the intake bay, the milk in store, the suppliers, the controls, what you look at away from the office, and the settings.
Intake
Loading opens only if it may open
The intake bay station is used with fingers, with gloves on. Supplier and silo are chosen, and before the pump starts the system looks at the health certificates of that farm.
Before opening
The four certificates
Leucosis, tuberculosis, brucellosis and dioxin: each with its expiry. If one expired, loading does not start.
- supplier notified thirty days before
- block at expiry, no automatic exceptions
- override only by the supervisor, and written
While loading
The weight stays in sight
What has come in so far and the room left in the silo are shown. At the close the system writes kilos, litres and temperature.
- start and end weight of the silo, from the cell
- sample and tube number tied to the loading
- the operator signs with the badge, not a pen
The intake bay: the tanker discharges, the weight rises and is seen rising.
Silo by silo
What is inside and for how long
From the overview a single silo opens. The card puts together the weight now, the curve of the last twenty-four hours, the deliveries that make up the blend and the date of the last CIP wash.
The level is seen, not computed
The drawn tank fills with the real weight. The percentage comes from the capacity set for that silo.
Litres and kilograms
Each product has its specific gravity: cow milk, buffalo milk, cream and whey do not weigh the same.
How long the milk has sat
Holding time starts from the oldest delivery still in the blend and helps decide what to process first.
Below minimum shows at once
Each silo has its threshold. When weight drops below, the card changes colour and the alert starts.
The cold chain
Temperature next to weight
Each silo can have its probe. Temperature is recorded on its own, every minute, and sits on the same line as the weight: milk standing warm is seen as it happens, not at day end.
- Readingone a minute, for each probe
- Limitper product, not the same for all
- Alertafter a quarter hour above the limit
- Recordcurves stay, month by month
Under every silo there are load cells: every number on this page comes from there.
Suppliers
Who brings milk with what papers
For each farm there are the municipality, the head of cattle, the four health certificates with their expiry dates and the whole history of deliveries. The intake bay reads from here, with nothing to ask.
Four certificatesleucosis, tuberculosis, brucellosis and dioxin, each with its date
Reminderto the supplier and the quality office, thirty days before expiry
Historyhow much delivered in the month and the year, with fat and protein averages
Refused loadingsthey stay written with the reason: proof that the check worked
To the supplier
The sheet the milk is paid on
At month end, for each supplier, the delivery statement comes out: day by day the kilograms, litres, fat and protein, with the weighted averages of the month. The kilograms are those of the cells: not a single figure is written by hand.
Statement
Starts on its own, on the day set
One PDF per supplier, all together, with the e-mail already prepared.
- refused deliveries and reason
- bridge-to-silo differences over tolerance
- amounts come from the ERP, not from this system
The portal
Optional, and asks for nothing
Those who do not use it keep getting the statement by post, as always. Those who use it also find past months.
- each supplier sees only their deliveries
- new certificates are uploaded there
- no other dairy plant data is visible
The sample from each delivery: fat and protein come back into the silo’s page.
The controls
What happened and who saw it
The alerts with their thresholds, the monthly control record, the chain behind a recall, and the log of who did what.
The control record
The monthly dossier fills itself in
Temperatures, CIP washes, certificates checked at the bay, holding times, bridge-to-silo differences: all lines already written by the system. At month end they become a ready dossier, with the non-conformities and who closed them.
No one copies anything
The record lines are the same ones the system wrote day by day, from the probes and the cells. There is no second step where a mistake can happen.
Each non-conformity closes
A breach of limits stays open until someone writes what happened and what was done. The name stays next to the line.
When needed, not only at month end
The dossier can be asked for any period, and in any of the five languages of the program.
At the audit, one sheet
A typical month: 44,640 temperature readings · 412 deliveries checked · 62 washes · 9 non-conformities, all closedThe dossier comes out in PDF and arrives by e-mail on the first of the month, with no one asking.
The monthly file, printed: the lines were written by the system, day after day.
Outside the office
The same view by the vats and on a phone
The program is a page: it opens on a tablet in the plant and on a phone with the same address and the same password. There is nothing to install and, if a device breaks, another one is used.
Cheesemaker tablet
The six silos on one screen, with weight, fill and temperature. Touching a silo opens its day; a discharge to the vat also opens from here.
Reports that go out alone
The milk of the day, silos below minimum, certificates expiring, unexpected changes: each with its time, its recipients and its attachment.
In the vat room the same picture, on a tablet hanging from its bracket.
The settings
The silos, the products and who may do what
Set once and it stays: the capacity and thresholds of each tank, the rules of each product, the operators’ badges, the printouts and the devices.
Weight indicators
They connect on the network, one per silo. The system recognises the protocols most common in industrial weighing plants and also reads the stable weight state.
Temperature probes
One per silo, read on the same round as the cells. Where there are none, the silo still works: only the cold curve is missing.
Weighbridge
It serves to compare the two weights of a delivery. It connects like the other instruments, with its address and its port.
If something goes silent
After a few seconds of silence the weight is unreadable on screen, the alarm sounds once and the silo is marked stopped. When the instrument returns, it resumes alone.
Nothing holds the last good valuean old weight shown as current is worse than no weight: the system says so
Test on demanda device is polled and what it answers is read, character by character
Printersreports on the office printer, labels on the bay one
Badgethe bay reader signs operations without gloves typing passwords
Quality, yield
What is in the blend
Fat and protein are recorded at the intake bay, with the delivery open. The silo keeps the average weighted on kilograms and uses it to say how much cheese to expect from each discharge.
- Weighted average
- Expected and real
The day’s figures
What comes in and what goes out
At the end of the day the system lines up inputs, outputs and stock and does the subtraction. What is over or missing stays written as «unexplained» until someone says what it is.
- Balance
- Compare
Washes
A washed silo is a silo that can fill
Each product has its interval between one wash and the next. The system counts the hours, warns before it runs out and, if the wash is missing, no loading opens on that silo.
- The count of hours
- The broken-off wash
None of these screens is a drawing: they are the pages of the system, with sample data.
When no one is there
At night
the rule changes
With the plant closed there are no normal changes. Any drop in weight, even a small one, becomes an alarm and reaches the phone of whoever is on watch, with the silo, the time and the kilograms.
The log
Every weight change, with its direction
Loadings and discharges detected by the instrument, with start weight, end weight and difference. Lines with no operation open stay highlighted.
Alert
On the phone, as it happens
The alert carries what is needed to decide: weight before, weight now, how long it lasted, who entered last.
Watch hoursthe start and end times are set, and they hold all day on days of shutdown
Night thresholdlower than the daytime one: at night thirty kilograms are enough to sound
Who gets itphone, e-mail and siren in the silo room, each with its own switch
What remainsthe alert, the time it was read and the name of who closed it
Weight falling for no reason is why these plants are monitoredThe system accuses no one: it records, alerts and keeps. What happened is decided by people, the next morning, looking at the lines.
If something is wrong
Where that
milk went
A positive result arrives on a batch. The supplier name and the day are typed, and the system answers: which silos that milk entered, what it mixed with, which vats it went to, which lots came out and who they were shipped to.
Sharesays how much of that milk is in each lot: below a threshold set by quality, the lot can be excluded
Transfersif the milk moved from one silo to another the chain goes on, unbroken
The dossiercomes out in PDF with chain, lots, notes and the certificates valid that day
The timethe search runs in front of whoever asks, not in two days of notebooks
The chain is rebuilt from weights, not from statementsEvery kilogram has a time, a silo and a destination, because it was weighed when it moved. The dossier is not written: it is printed.
The plant
What is needed
to make it work
A computer in the office acts as server. The instruments connect on the network. All the rest are pages: they open from any computer, tablet or phone in the plant, with an address and a password.
Silo load cellsone per tank
Probetemperature, where fitted
Weighbridgeto compare the weights
Badge, printersbay and office
SI.SCO SILOS · office server
OfficeIntake bay and vat roomTablets, phones
The instruments talk to the server; people talk to the pages. Between the two there is nothing to install.
An ordinary machine
An office computer with Windows and a database. It stays on and does its round: no machine room needed.
- the database can sit on the same machine
- backup with the tools already on site
- no external service required
Pages, not programs
Bay, office, vat room, tablets and phones open the same address. A new station is added in a few minutes.
- the bay is used with gloves, large touches
- the tablet has nothing to install
- a station can be tied to its machine, if needed
Five, in full
Italian, English, French, Spanish and Hungarian: in screens, alerts and prints. The language belongs to the viewer, not to the plant.
- each operator has one
- prints come out in the language chosen
- the monthly dossier follows the same rule
Access and log
Each line has a name
Who logs in, what they may do, what they did. The event log collects everything that changes the numbers: deliveries, overrides, thresholds changed, weight corrections, logins. It cannot be edited or deleted.
The log
What happened, and by whose hand
The search is by day, by person, by kind of event. The system’s automatic lines sit beside those of people.
Rights
Each one can do what is needed
Opening a loading, discharging to the vat, recording a sample, overriding an expired supplier, correcting a weight: these are separate switches.
Three tiersoperator, administrator and supervisor, with fine rights above these
Badgeopens the bay and signs the operation; switched off from a screen in a second
What never reaches the logno password, plain or encrypted, and no personal data beyond the name
Retentionthe dairy plant decides the time; the system deletes nothing on its own
The log serves to rebuild a day, not to watch peopleWhen a number does not add up, the question is the same: what happened at three at night. The answer is already written.
In brief
Three
unknowns today
A silo plant without continuous monitoring leaves three questions always open. They are the same three in every dairy, and the three this system answers with a number and a time.
How much milk is missing
Not at month end, when the figures do not add up: at the moment the weight moves.
- inputs and outputs compared each day
- bridge and silo compared on each delivery
- unexpected changes flagged at once
- differences that stay open until explained
Where a given delivery ended up
When a question arrives on a batch, the answer is already in the system.
- which silos it entered and what it mixed with
- which vats it went to and which lots came out
- which customers those wheels were shipped to
- a PDF dossier, ready to hand over
Whether the checks were done
Temperatures, washes, certificates and stops are already written: the dossier collects them.
- one temperature reading a minute, per probe
- each wash with time and temperature
- each refused loading with its reason
- each non-conformity closed and signed
How it startsthe plant is surveyed, silos and instruments counted, and the system tried on two tanks
What stays with the dairythe data is theirs and sits in their database; prints and exports can be taken away at any time
Brochure
SI.SCO SILOS
Supervision and control system for dairy plants. Part of the SI.SCO Series by EDG Sistemi: industrial solutions for weighing, production and the warehouse.
20 pages · PDF · in five languages
Let’s talk
Let’s talk We look at the plant, count the silos and the instruments, and try the system on two tanks: the rest is added afterwards, without stopping intake.
Contact
Let's talk
about the shop floor.
What is weighed, what is labelled, what does not add up at the end of the day: that is the starting point, with a site visit, and it ends with a written proposal. No commitment before the proposal.
- 01A phone call or an e-mailYou describe the shop floor as it is today: machines, workstations, what you want to solve.
- 02The site visitWe look at the lines, the scales, the printers and the management system in use, together with the people who work with them.
- 03The written proposalWhat will be done, in which order, with which timing and costs. Work starts only after the agreement.
- OfficesPalazzo Gecos · Via Arcora 110 · 80013 Casalnuovo di Napoli (NA)
- Registered officeVia Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra 64 · 80133 Napoli
- Phone081 028 2091
- E-mailcommerciale@edgsistemi.it
- HoursMonday – Friday · 9:00 – 18:00