In industrial manufacturing, precision and efficiency drive profitability. One critical, yet often overlooked, practice that enhances both is bin tuning—a process that ensures batch control systems perform at peak efficiency, reducing waste, maximizing throughput and delivering consistent final products. If your facility uses batch control systems, bin tuning should be a regular part of your operations.
The importance of bin tuning is linked to how different production processes experience different pains due to improper bin tuning:
- High-throughput operations: Outdated or improper system tuning can create false alarms, require re-measurements and waste ingredients. At a high volume, even lower-cost ingredient waste adds up.
- High-cost ingredient operations: In systems using high-cost materials, inaccuracies in the batching process can lead to significant financial waste.
I observed the consequences of a poorly tuned batching system during a recent visit to an animal feed manufacturing facility. Their system regularly overweighed a specific ingredient by 60 pounds, far exceeding the established tolerance of +/- 50 pounds. This happened across 5,000 batches over the year, leading to an estimated loss of 75 tons of product and downtime totaling 7.5 hours. This resulted in more than $25,000 in waste from that specific ingredient alone, plus lost revenue from nearly eight hours of halted production.
For operations handling high-value materials, even small tuning errors can result in massive financial losses. Even if a system may waste less material overall, the dollar impact can still be higher due to the cost of the ingredients.
Understanding bin tuning
At its core, bin tuning is the process of continually optimizing batch control systems to ensure they operate at their peak. These systems are usually tuned during start-up but often receive little attention afterward, even as equipment ages, breaks or is replaced. Without regular tuning, performance can degrade over time.
Here’s what bin tuning involves:
- Tuning at start-up: Systems are initially configured for peak performance.
- Evolution over time: Equipment changes and production needs evolve, requiring regular tuning.
- Adjustments: Bin tuning involves analyzing system performance against peak efficiency metrics and making the necessary adjustments.
Bin tuning is all about tuning your system to meet your unique operational requirements, not relying on one-size-fits-all global parameters.
The benefits
Bin tuning’s benefits can be grouped into three categories:
- Reduce ingredient waste: By optimizing feeder speeds and weighing accuracy, bin tuning minimizes the risk of wasting expensive materials. Accurate measurements ensure fewer raw materials are wasted, directly translating to cost savings.
- Optimize throughput: Tuning your system balances speed and accuracy, allowing for increased production without sacrificing precision. For high-throughput facilities, small improvements can yield significant gains in productivity and make a notable impact on the bottom line.
- Increase product accuracy: Inaccuracies during batching can lead to inconsistent final products. Bin tuning ensures that every batch is made to your exact recipe specifications, maintaining product consistency. This is especially crucial for facilities with multiple locations, as customers expect the same product quality across all batches. Failing to meet this standard means you could lose the trust of your customers—a cost no facility can afford.
Keep your systems tuned
If your facility isn’t already having its batch control systems tuned regularly, it should be. Small system changes—whether in equipment or recipes—can have a cascading effect and it’s essential to work with experts who understand the entire process, not just the programming. The right expertise can identify the root causes of inefficiencies and tune your system to its specific needs, avoiding the pitfalls of applying broad, generalized fixes.
The bottom line is this: Without regular bin tuning, you’re wasting money, time and, potentially, customer trust—losses that could be avoided with a small investment in regular bin tuning.
Joe Washburn is lead control system analyst at Interstates, a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA). For more information about Interstates, visit its profile on the Industrial Automation Exchange.
