“When it comes to automation, what we’re seeing is a continuation of what began at larger sites. The desire for higher-volume facilities is trickling down to the mid- and small-sized elevators.
“Grain companies want the customer experience to be the same at all elevators, regardless of the size.
“Another trend we’ve witnessed over the past several years is the desire for an outbound scale. Adding a second scale away from the scale house can alleviate your traffic flow. Outbound scales are automated, so there’s no reason to have someone manning that area. Small facilities and even ethanol plants have started doing this.
“Oilseed processors are beginning to use automation to manage inbound and outbound traffic. They have oilseeds coming in to the facility, as well as trucks for co-products like oil and meal. Automation can help keep all of that truck flow for dumping and loadout organized.
“We’re implementing a lot of automation systems for pickups or loadouts of co-products. Pickup often is manless. So at an ethanol plant, you may be coming into pick up DDGs, and you would drive to the scale that’s dedicated for that and not interact with anyone. But there would be a message board there that would tell drivers to enter their load number. The system then would give permission to enter the plant to load.
“This is an area of automation that’s a more recent trend. Those types of transactions can be made manless because it’s a load order. It’s sold. Somebody is there to pick it up; they are coming in, and they’re going to be telling the operator in the scale house a number that they have for pickup. So what we’re doing is saying, ‘No, leave that operating scale house alone. Pull up, and input the number into our system.’”
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Reprinted from Grain Journal May/June 2020 Issue