Fifteen bins, forty tonnes of made tea, and a stock figure nobody argues with.

The problem with a display nobody reads

Most factories already weigh their bins. The load cells are there, the indicator on the wall shows a figure, and that is where it stops. Stock is written down on a card at shift change, the warehouse counts what it receives, and by Friday the two numbers have drifted apart. The argument that follows is about whose figure is right, not about the tea.

What was put in

• Every sorting-room bin read from its own indicator over serial or network. Bins without weighing were fitted with load cells, a junction box and an indicator.
• A gateway at the factory that polls every indicator, keeps its own database and pushes readings to the dashboard. It carries on recording when the internet drops and catches up when it returns.
• Each bin tagged with what it holds, by mark and grade, so stock totals roll up by product and not just by bin.
• Fills from the sorting line and dispensed weights to packing captured as movements with the time, the bin and the grade.
• Alerts for high and low levels, a bin draining faster than the line is running, and a bin that has not moved in a shift.
• A stock take that records the physical count against the live figure, with the difference shown as a report.

The same weighing engine runs the factory's bins and a weighbridge, so a site that already runs KiloSahihi on its bridge adds bins as a feature, not as a second system.

The stock picture now