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Mettler Toledo: Innovation Through R&D, Acquisition, Consolidation, and Service

Mettler Toledo Product Inspection offers a broad selection of reliable inspection and measurement equipment that the company continuously advances to support customers’ regulatory needs.

The V31 vision machine in the onsite Applications Center.
The V31 vision machine in the onsite Applications Center.
Mettler Toledo Product Inspection

To be defined as an “innovative” company is something every OEM wants.  But there are many aspects of innovation beyond invention, and at Mettler Toledo, its innovative essence is rooted in equipment quality, safety compliance, and service.

Mettler Toledo, headquartered in Switzerland, provides a variety of measurement and precision instruments for the customer value chain.  It started off as two separate companies—Toledo Scale, founded in 1901, and Mettler, founded in 1945. The two companies merged in 1989 and has since grown into a global organization with five business divisions, one of which is Mettler Toledo Product Inspection, based in Lutz, FL.

Mettler Toledo Product Inspection makes metal detectors, X-ray inspection, vision inspection, checkweighers, and track and trace technology for the food and life sciences industries. The concept of consolidating innovative strategies, knowledge, tools, and abilities of different companies is instrumental in the development of today’s Product Inspection group, which grows at a rate of seven to 10% annually, with R&D representing 5% of net sales per year.

Mettler Toledo Sidebar 2022

Alan Zeng, OEM business development manager at Mettler Toledo Product Inspection, emphasizes the company’s ability to grow through acquisition. “We look for companies who are also leaders in their markets and where their products complement or help to round out our offerings.”

Key acquisitions that have formed the Product Inspection division to date include:

  • Hi-Speed, founded in 1953 and acquired by Toledo Scale in 1981, a maker of checkweighers.
  • Safeline, a maker of metal detectors founded in 1989, acquired by Mettler Toledo in 1997.
  • For vision inspection, CI-Vision, founded in the late 1970's, was acquired by Mettler Toledo in 2009.
  • And, PCE founded in 1989, was acquired by Mettler Toledo in 2011, adding comprehensive track and trace with serialization and aggregation software to the company’s product portfolio.

According to Zeng, the previous general manager of the Product Inspection group, Viggo Nielsen, had the vision of moving all of the machines and technologies into one place in order to utilize all of the brands’ resources. Nielsen made that vision a reality in 2018 by combining the business units, which previously were spread out in three locations, to a newly constructed 270,000 sq. ft., state-of-the-art facility in the Lutz, FL location. The next year, Nielsen retired and Margie Custin took over as general manager of the Market Organization (sales, service and marketing) for Mettler Toledo Product Inspection.


Read article   Read about Mettler Toledo Product Inspection's change in location and leadership. 


By consolidating operations the company is able to streamline customer service across metal detection, X-ray inspection, checkweighing, machine vision, and track and trace/serialization capabilities. This also increases efficiency with all machines being assembled in the same production location, as well as parts and procurement engineering.

And further innovating on these acquisitions, Mettler Toledo was the first to invent digital metal detectors, Zeng says, noting the company then added foreign material detection for non-metal contaminants in addition to metal contaminants with X-ray technology, eventually becoming the largest X-ray machine producer for the food industry. Concerns about food safety have grown over the last decade and as product inspection is the mainstream method of assuring food safety, Mettler Toledo has utilized its resources to “grasp the opportunity and grow with it,” he says.

To that end, the company dedicates itself as a resource to its customers. It sends food safety advisors to customer sites, participates in industry seminars, joins food safety associations, and closely monitors the Food and Drug Administration to keep up with the latest in food safety regulations.

Benefits of Lean application and vFATs

As much as the company focuses externally on customer service, it also keeps internal operations at peak performance. The Florida facility runs on Lean manufacturing design principles, Zeng says, which allows for more efficient workflow by only keeping key personnel on the work floor for quick response times and building core components on site.