Following its successful launch last year by TOMRA Sorting Recycling, TOMRA Insight is now also being made available to TOMRA Mining customers, TOMRA Food and Compac, part of the TOMRA Food family.
TOMRA Insight’s data-gathering helps processors in near real-time and retrospect. Because product quality is measured continuously, machine operators are empowered to make prompt and optimal adjustments to machine settings in response to product quality changes on the line. And because TOMRA Insight provides previously inaccessible deep-dive data, customers are now empowered to make operational and business decisions based on more complete information.
TOMRA’s engineers help customers analyze critical data every month as part of the TOMRA Insight subscription service. Accurate and timely comparison is now possible between multiple sites, shifts, batches, and seasons.
Felix Flemming, Vice President and Head of Digital at TOMRA Sorting, commented: “By capturing and using valuable data, TOMRA Insight is transforming sorting from an operational process into a strategic management tool. And this tool is constantly becoming more powerful as we continuously develop it in response to customers’ needs and priorities. New functionalities and features are released every three weeks – a routine during which TOMRA works closely with customers in pursuit of shared objectives.”
Thanks to the performance metrics gathered by TOMRA Insight, processors can benefit in many ways. Downtime is reduced by monitoring machine health and performance to support predictive and condition-based maintenance. Throughput is maximized by evaluating variations and optimizing sorting equipment accordingly. Efficiency is improved by identifying gaps in production and analyzing potential root causes. Sorting to target quality is enhanced by being able to make decisions based on accurate product composition data. And operations are simplified through easier spare parts ordering and flexible access to data and documentation.
One food processor which conducted an early trial of TOMRA Insight and has now committed to the subscription service is The Jersey Royal Company. Located in the British Crown Dependency of Jersey, this company is the producer of the internationally-recognized Jersey Royal new potato in the Channel Islands.
Andrzej Kopacz, Operations Manager at The Jersey Royal Company, commented: “TOMRA builds ‘the Rolls-Royce’ of sorters, and TOMRA Insight is a strong addition to these machines. Using the information we’re getting from Insight, we are now managing product-quality more precisely to meet customer expectations, improve product control and allocation, see where we need to help sorters meet targets, reduce waste, and make better use of the equipment with less downtime. We are now also able to give better feedback to our growers. For example, we can flag-up very quickly if there are too many unwanted green potatoes coming through for processing. To us, it’s clear that TOMRA Insight is well worth having.”