Optimización del Proceso de Envasado de Racimos de Productos en Pesadoras Multicabezal

The use of multihead packaging systems enhances the production of packages with minimal margins of error in their content. This document presents an optimization approach for the packaging process of food products in multihead cluster weighing machines. The approach proposes a procedure to emulate the real process, aiming to find a package weight with minimal difference from its target label weight. For this purpose, an enumerative algorithm was developed to simulate the process, validate, and compare all possible package weight values, and choose the optimal weight value. Validation experiments included calculating process variability measures such as standard deviation and coefficient of variation for the produced packages. Additionally, central tendency measures like the average weight of the packages were also analyzed. The most notable results demonstrate that variability measures are higher when the target weight decreases, and they remain stable regardless of the number of hoppers in the machine and the quantity of packages to be produced. In these cases, the average weight of the packages deviates significantly from its target weight. On the other hand, when the target weight, the number of weighing hoppers, and the quantity of packages to be produced increase, the process variability tends to decrease. In this regard, the optimal configuration of the machine will depend on the input parameters in the package production. In conclusion, the utility of the proposed approach has been demonstrated and validated for the optimization of the packaging process.