Application of RFID in chocolate production line

With its high-quality candy production plants, Winkler und Dünnebier (WDS) has become the top production equipment plant in the industry. While maintaining tradition and focusing on quality, continuous innovation is also the key to their success. Now, with Turck's BL ident RFID system, the company can provide its customers with optimized production, optimal mold and product tracking, and production data management.

All molds at a glance

Chocolate production is a complex multi-stage process. Therefore, it was decided to introduce RFID as an innovative NFC technology for its candy production.

For this purpose, all plastic molds (which can number in the thousands depending on the factory) are equipped with RFID data carriers. Read/write heads are permanently installed in production lines and mobile acquisition systems in warehouses and production areas, and can track the progress of each mold through a central control station. Within the production line, database-oriented RFID systems help ensure optimal mold and product tracking, as well as process optimization and production statistics improvement.

All information collected by the control system is transferred to a local database on the factory operations server, which Stores data on all molds in the current production cycle of the production line. The generated information is synchronized with the server for comprehensive mold management and tracking. A complete RFID system includes read heads not only on production machines, but also on mold cleaning stations and storage systems. If the customer requires, WDS can even retrofit third-party equipment with Turck RFID read heads.

Today, Turck's RFID system ensures that a central server database of all WDS machines contains valuable information that can be used to optimize factory productivity and production quality. Data pools have a wide range of possible applications, including optimizing logistics. With a click of the mouse, the system displays the location of each mold or tracks the path the mold takes within the production plant. This enables easy localization of potential fault sources.

Production-specific data can also be determined with Turck's RFID systems: For example, molds or even complete mold sets with a higher-than-average rejection rate can be easily identified and these molds can be picked out automatically. Another application is to compare the production characteristics of a mold set to a specific batch. In addition to quality management, the data pool also offers a wide range of application possibilities for quality monitoring and hygiene guidance in factories.

The RFID system easily identifies whether the cleaning cycle has been performed correctly. Now, RFID can be used to closely track production sequences, such as placing molds centrally in cooling cabinets, or changing molds during production for special test samples. The technology can also provide an immediate alert if the inserted mold is not suitable for the current production process. Molds can even be changed during production: the old mold is ejected while a new mold is inserted into the system. Users can also use freely combined mold Tool set production solutions to improve production flexibility.