There’s one Key Performance Indicator that every packaging operation is held accountable for: WEIGHT CONTROL.
Too much product in the package and you're giving away margin with every bag that goes out the door. Too little and you're facing regulatory violations, customer complaints and brand damage that's hard to repair. In high-speed operations, running hundreds of packages per minute, that KPI gets measured thousands and thousands of times a day.
For nearly 25 years, Spee-Dee Packaging Machinery has partnered with Wipotec Weighing Technology Group to weigh packages with precision, speed and reliability. This isn't just a supplier relationship. It's a partnership that's shaped how we approach checkweighing technology and how we deliver value to our customers through best-in-class reliability and equipment integrations that ensure accuracy and quality in real time.
Why Accurate Checkweighers Matter More Than Ever
The Role of Checkweighers in Your Operation
An accurate checkweigher does exactly what its name suggests: it checks the weight of finished packages as they move through your production line. In most packaging operations, particularly those running vertical form fill seal machines, the checkweigher sits downstream from the bagger and captures the weight of each package immediately after it's sealed.
The data flowing from that checkweigher isn't just for compliance reporting. It's active intelligence that can feed back to your filler in real time, making micro-adjustments to prevent overfills and underfills before they become problems. At scale, this feedback loop saves thousands of dollars in product giveaway and protects you from the kind of weight violations that invite regulatory scrutiny.
The High-Speed Challenge
The challenge is doing this accurately at production speeds. When you're running 60 bags per minute, you have time to weigh carefully. When you're running 200 bags per minute everything changes.
The weighing technology has to be fast enough to capture accurate data on products that are essentially flying across the weigh deck. The integration has to be tight enough that corrections happen seamlessly. And the whole system has to be robust enough to run day after day without drift or degradation.
That's where Wipotec's Electro-Magnetic Force Restoration (EMFR) technology comes in, and where our partnership really shows its value.
The High Precision Checkweighing Technology Behind the Partnership
EMFR: Speed and Accuracy That Matters
Wipotec supplies Spee-Dee with three-belt weigh kits that include the conveyors and their EMFR weigh cell. EMFR stands for electromagnetic force restoration, which is a technical way of describing an extremely fast and accurate weighing method. The practical benefit is a one-millisecond update rate that captures weight data almost instantaneously as the product crosses the weigh deck.
That speed matters because it allows us to send weight information to our fillers for immediate adjustments when needed. But speed alone isn't enough. The system also has to handle the reality of high-speed packaging: products moving at angles, packages with irregular shapes, variations in how bags settle on the belt. Wipotec's technology handles all of this while maintaining the accuracy our customers depend on.
The Three-Belt Incline Advantage
One of the unique features we've developed together is the three-belt incline checkweigher. As far as we know, it's the only checkweigher in the industry that weighs product moving uphill. This matters in tight production environments where space is at a premium. Instead of requiring a long horizontal run after your form fill seal machine, the incline design lets you weigh packages as they move up to the next stage of your line. You get accurate weight data without sacrificing valuable floor space.
Built to Last
The other advantage of Wipotec's technology is its longevity. The EMFR weighing cell can be refurbished if needed, and their software can be updated on any unit they've built, regardless of age. There's essentially no end-of-life for this technology. That's important when you're making capital equipment decisions and thinking about total cost of ownership over 10, 15 or 20 years.
How We Approach Accurate Checkweigher Feedback Differently
The Problem with Simple Corrections
Here's where the partnership really shows up in the details. Most of our competitors handle weight corrections by doing simple math. If your filler is running light by a certain amount, they calculate the adjustment needed and tell the machine to move straight to that new setting. It's logical, but it often leads to overshooting, especially at high speeds.
Our Gain Percentage Method
We approach it differently using gain percentages. When we need to add weight, we only apply about 85% of the calculated correction. When we need to remove weight, we only pull back about 60%. This prevents the system from overcorrecting and helps us dial in more precisely, especially in challenging applications.
When It Matters Most
At lower speeds on free-flowing products, the difference isn't dramatic. If you're running something like cereal at 60 bags per minute, there's minimal variation and almost any feedback system will work fine. But at 200 bags per minute with strange-shaped packages, the compensation becomes critical. The system accounts for how packages move on the belt, how they settle and how air displacement affects the reading. All of that goes into the correction algorithm.
The integration between our controls and Wipotec's weighing technology makes this possible. The one-millisecond update rate gives us the data speed we need. Our control logic applies the gain percentages intelligently. And the customer sees tighter weight control with less giveaway and fewer rejected packages.
What 25 Years of Partnership Actually Means
When my brother Dave, who serves as President of Spee-Dee, talks about the partnership with Wipotec, he focuses on three things. Availability, reliability, and willingness to develop new features based on customer needs.
That last point is important. We don't just buy components and integrate them. We collaborate on engineering challenges. When a customer comes to us with a difficult application, we work with Wipotec to figure out the solution. They're willing to tackle challenges with us, and their people understand the process well enough to ask the right questions.
From Wipotec's perspective, Damian Turiello, their Director of OEM Sales for North America, describes Spee-Dee as a legacy customer and talks about the quality of the collaboration. The relationship works because both companies are focused on solving real problems for end users rather than just selling equipment.
That shows up in our customer base. We recently shipped 15 checkweighers to a major contract packager, which will bring their total number of Spee-Dee checkweighers to roughly 100. They've been replacing their older equipment systematically, and the fact that they keep coming back says something about the performance and longevity of the check weighing systems we build.
We're also seeing growth in stand-alone checkweigher sales. It used to be that most of our checkweighers were integrated with complete filling systems. Now we're selling roughly as many stand-alone units as integrated systems, which tells us that customers trust the technology enough to add it to existing lines or mix and match with other equipment.
What We Can Do for Your High Precision Checkweighing Needs
If you're evaluating high precision checkweighing technology for your packaging operation, here's what you should be looking for:
✔ Proven performance over time
✔ Future-proof investment in upgradable technology
✔ Space-efficient designs that work in real production environments
✔ The kind of accuracy and speed that holds up at production scale
The Spee-Dee and Wipotec partnership delivers all of that. The three-belt incline checkweigher gives you options in space-constrained facilities. The EMFR technology gives you speed and accuracy that doesn't degrade over time. The integration gives you intelligent checkweigh feedback that minimizes giveaway. And the partnership itself gives you access to two companies that have been refining this technology together for a quarter century.
Most partnerships in manufacturing don't last 25 years. The ones that do last are built on mutual problem-solving, shared investment in development and a genuine focus on customer outcomes rather than just component sales. That's what we've built with Wipotec, and it's what you get when you choose a Spee-Dee checkweigher.
If you're looking for checkweighing solutions that integrate seamlessly with your packaging operation, or if you want to add precision to an existing line, we should talk. The combination of Wipotec's weighing technology and Spee-Dee's integration expertise might be exactly what your operation needs.
To learn more about Spee-Dee's high precision checkweighers or to discuss your specific application, reach out to us today.