In cement plants in India, Egypt, Angola, among other countries with large production and demand for cement, the cement is normally packed and dispatched in paper/plastic bags. To leverage the vast production and dispatching capabilities of these plants, smooth logistics processes for the bags loading, counting, weighing and dispatching processes are critical.

Some of the biggest plants can easily dispatch more than 1000 trucks per day and, to achieve these figures, the plant operators must be assisted by automatic systems to reduce errors and faults (and even fraud) and reduce the bureaucratic procedures and paperwork which consumes huge amounts of time. Additionally, the bags loading processes are normally based on entirely manual or non integrated systems, which create several difficulties in the exchange and validation of the information from the purchase orders (registered in the ERP) to the packing plant operators and require an additional operation at the end of the process – the recounting of bags (and necessary adjustments, if required).

The manual counting of bags is one of the main problems in the manual or semi-automatic loading of bags, because it is often subject to errors. The plant needs to make sure that the amount of bags requested by the customer for each particular loading operation is met, in the shortest time possible, in order to satisfy the customer’s expectation. Cachapuz Bilanciai Group is aware of all these limitations and problems in the bags loading processes and is offering to the market the possibility to overcome those problems, improving the loading, counting and dispatching processes in cement plants.

• Accurate and automatic counting of bags due to an internal and proprietary algorithm;
• Avoiding of the trucks’ return to the packing plants to add or remove bags due to an incorrect number of bags loaded;
• Detection and counting of jointly bags;
• Registration of extra bags loaded;
• Extra control due to an external speed sensor;
• Information panel and alert lights to indicate the status of the operation;
• RFID activated to enable the automatic identification of the loading operation;
• Possibility to automatically control the loading machine;
• Compatible with different types of loading machines (flexible installation for truck and wagons loading);
• Standalone and integrated modes (with/without SLV Cement/ERP);
• Detailed logs and reporting features;
• Alerts and notifications through email/SMS;
• Elimination of manual counting of bags;
• Reduction of paperwork and manual operations;
• Reduction of human errors and fraud;
• Reduction of Turnaround Time of the loading and counting processes.

SLV Cement is a dispatching and truck management solution that automates all the processes, from the trucks arrival at the cement plant, to the dispatching of cement/clinker, reception of raw materials and automatic printing of the necessary documentation at the end of the process. SLV Cement not only enhances the logistics processes inside the cement plant, but also guarantees all the data exchange between the logistics and commercial departments efficiently and automatically by being integrated with the ERP. SLV Cement complements the business software (ERP) with automation features, creating a vertical and tailored solution for cement companies. The main functional areas covered by the solution are:

• RFID access control and identification (both short and long range RFID technologies)
• Cement and Clinker Dispatching
• Automatic truck parking management (queue and calling)
• Entry/exit gates control
• Self-service and unmanned weighing
• Self-service bulk loading (cement, clinker and fly ash) for trucks and wagons
• Bags loading and automatic counting
• Raw materials unloading control
• Fleet management (GPS/GPRS)
• Business and KPI analysis and rich Reporting features
• ERP integration in online and offline modes (contingency)

Additional information, videos, case studies, main customers, references and news can be found in https://www.slvcement.com