Melosch, a German business which offers tailored disposal solutions and modern processing facilities recognizes the enormous potential of the Tomra Insight data platform, produced by Tomra Recycling, Norwegian manufacturer of sensor-based sorting technologies for the recycling and waste management industry. Tomra Insight collects data from automated sorting units to provide a fully transparent performance overview. Furthermore, the statistical analysis can be used to instantly optimize machine settings and make data-informed decisions that positively impact the business long term.
Municipal waste paper sorting remains a strong pillar of Melosch’s business today which operates in 11 production plants with 5 paper sorting systems, employing approximately 350 people and processing more than 150,000 metric tons of high purity recyclable paper annually.
Vadim Sander, Branch Manager at the Melosch Company’s Ahrensburg plant, declared: “As the packaging and paper industry steadily transitions to a circular economy, our customers’ quality expectations have gotten a lot higher. Quality used to mean adding manual sorters to remove impurities and distinguish between paper types. Now it’s about delivering nearly perfect quality in a fraction of the time. With the labor environment not being in our favor, it only seemed logical to upgrade our lines with the newest generation Autosort with Tomra Insight to uncover new opportunities for optimization. The fully automated, connected sorting units maximize throughput and stabilize our workforce. Our customers are satisfied too because the Tomra sorting units deliver consistently pure yields.”
Tomra Insight gathers near real-time data and safely stores it in the cloud so it can be accessed remotely via web-based desktops and mobile devices. Since the platform continuously measures the quality of the material stream in the sorting line, operators have the power of data to optimize settings to respond to material composition changes. And because Tomra Insight provides deep-dive data that wasn’t previously available, managers can now make operational and business decisions based on clear-cut and detailed information.
The value of always having sorting line data on hand offers huge potential. Downtime can be reduced by monitoring machine health, supporting predictive and condition-based maintenance management, thus preventing unscheduled machine shutdowns. Monitoring variations in throughput can improve efficiencies through Tomra Insight data as well.
The data platform can also reduce operational costs by minimizing loss and providing optimal quality. After installing two new generation Autosort machines with Tomra Insight, Melosch now has fewer reclamations of material, proving the sorting data offers a competitive advantage in salable secondary raw materials.
Melosch's Ahrensburg plant operates with two new generation Autosort machines which are connected to Tomra Insight and have been installed in 2020 and 2021. Due to the positive results achieved through the software, the Erfurt plant will soon connect its two Autosort units from the previous generation to Tomra Insight as well. At the Pinneberg facility, a new Autosort has complemented another existing Autosort machine.
