Tips & Tricks: Reduce Counting Errors - METTLER TOLEDO

Tips & Tricks: Reduce Counting Errors

Minimize counting errors and achieve higher accuracy with optimized reference counting. Count fewer parts at a time and increase sample quantity.

Mobile Dimensioning
Mobile Dimensioning

How advanced is your scale? The technical level of the scale plays a major part in defining a scale's capability to weigh accurately. But no matter how advanced your weighing technology, when counting manually, the major sources of counting error are operator mistakes and piece-weight variance. Those operator errors are caused not only by misreading scale results or incorrect handling. Miscounting  often starts one step earlier, namely when taking the reference weight.

Take the correct reference
To start a counting operation, you must first determine the average piece weight. Because even highly standardized parts have small deviations in weight, you have to calculate an average weight per piece to then count bulk quantity. When taking a sample of 10 pieces, for example, you can calculate the complete batch. Logically, the greater the sample quantity, the greater the likelihood that the sample will represent the bulk quantity. But more counting leads to more errors. Efficiency pressure, shift change or lacking operator concentration are common reasons for even this small number of reference pieces to be miscounted.

Simple functionality for secure counting
METTLER TOLEDO ICS4 and ICS6 scales feature APW Optimization. The scale assists the operator to achieve a much higher sample size and more accurate results by reducing miscounting. With APW Optimization, the operator can start off with a very small sample    size. After an initial rough average piece weight is calculated, you can add more pieces and the scale will calculate a new average piece weight based on the net weight of all the pieces. That makes reference taking less error-prone and increases the sample size conveniently for higher accuracy counting.

Learn more about APW Optimization on the ICS4 and ICS6:

METTLER TOLEDO ICS4 and ICS6