INDUSTRY 4.0/SMART FACTORY
FOOD INDUSTRY TRENDS: ROBOT-ASSISTED WORKFLOWS Smart, robot-assisted production and packaging will maximise profitability
By Robert Brooks, Omron Europe’s industry manager food and beverage
A
challenge accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic has seen producers having to juggle between longer term range proliferation centred on consumer demands, and range [SKU’s] reduction caused by retailers’ and consumers’ rapidly changing buying habits. This has resulted in producers having to be even more agile with existing assets. These assets in the form of single or connected machines must therefore be more flexible than ever, meaning they must be supplied with the right material and packaging at the right time. To reduce storage costs and waste, companies in the industry want to produce only what is needed for shipping. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and collaborative robots (cobots), as well as traditional industrial robots are being increasingly used in factories, replacing conveyor belts or accumulation/buffer stations. The challenge is to create a flexible, continuous production process for customer-specific manufacturing and to minimise costly, rigid and maintenance-intensive conveyor sequences, which usually take considerable space. Companies that break new ground by using innovative technologies not only gain agility, but also reduce scrap, contamination risk, waste and losses.
FUTURE INDUSTRY TRENDS
The latest Mintel report identified three key food and beverage trends that are likely to take hold by 2030:
• Developments such as sustainable nutrition and increasingly informed consumers
• The growing importance of food science and modern technology in manufacturing. In the future, companies will use state-of-the-art tools to bring more product innovations to market, shorten production times and increase trust in brands
• Optimisation of factory performance by controlling the flow of goods in the production and storage areas. This is the only way in which companies will be able to meet new retail and consumer demands. They must produce retail- ready items faster, using a high-mix, low-volume approach with no recalls An important question in this context is: how can a project be realised cost- effectively and with a realistic return on investment (ROI)? A key focus is on
38 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021 | FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS
smart production and packaging lines that can be easily reconfigured to meet changing market and consumer needs.
FIVE ADVANTAGES OF AUTOMATION The development, construction and the use of such a line requires sound knowledge and experience to ensure that the investment can reach its full potential. Therefore, detailed planning, advice from experienced partners and innovative solutions are key elements for developing an improvement in line performance. They provide the basis for the future-oriented flow of goods and consumables in the factory hall and adjacent storage areas. Anyone who carefully automates machine loading and unloading processes can benefit from five advantages:
1. Employees can be increasingly deployed on value-adding tasks: they are no longer needed for routine tasks, as the machine can do these 2. All work steps can be reliably tracked, stored and analysed 3. Overall equipment efficiency (OEE) is improved by reducing machine stops and optimising availability and performance 4. Companies benefit from faster product changes
5. Production lines can be quickly and easily modified to meet new needs and require less space than conventional static systems
THE BENEFITS OF AMRS AND COBOTS Many companies in the food industry are planning more flexible and seamless production and packaging lines for customer-specific products. This will minimise the need for expensive and inflexible conveyor processes. Easily configurable production lines will ideally consist of collaborative and flexible transport and transfer solutions, tailored to specific production environments. Examples include robots, AMRs, cobots and more recently solutions that combine two. Their tasks include the transport of work in progress (WIP) stock between sites or adjacent areas, with the process being managed and controlled by a special fleet management solution. Reconfigurable systems in the food industry link assets and reduce costs by storing only what’s needed
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54
