A meat packing facility has several scales for weighing meat. All of the scales are connected to a central station which serves to display, monitor, store and process weight data from the scales. The central station comprises a personal computer, a monitor and a keyboard which are mounted on a rack. Hardware associated with the scales generates protocols for the latter. The protocol for each scale includes the respective weight data in digital form as well as identifying data for the scale. The protocols are sent to the central station where the identifying data are used to link weight data to a particular scale.