Within our workshop there have been several setups of specialty machines and production lines. Van Wees Waalwijk custom builds them in all shapes and sizes for companies in various sectors. From a cigar-drilling machine and a lid-mounting machine, to the flan ejection robot and complete packaging and transport lines. No machine goes out the door before it has been extensively tested. This also applies to the food industry.
Mobile cobot for a bakery
A good example of robotizing a production process is the creation of a mobile cobot for a bakery. The idea for the mobile cobot (the collaborative robot, a robot that works together with people) arose when it turned out that many operations were still being done manually that could actually be automated.
The problem was that those operations took place in multiple places within the bakery. The solution: don't bring the work to the robot, but the robot to the work." A mobile cobot, then, that is multi-deployable and easy to program, takes up little space and requires no safety cage.
The mobile cobot developed serves several purposes. First, the machine takes over heavy and monotonous work from people who often work under adverse conditions. In addition to less staff wastage, the mobile cobot also increases food safety, reduces food waste and makes companies less dependent on labor shortages. So the cobot as an additional "employee" offers a host of benefits.
Large companies are more likely to invest in automation than smaller companies. While heavy monotonous work is done there as well. By having people do the preparatory work and robots do the executive work, companies can scale up production faster, serve more customers and offer even more diversity. That can only benefit the food sector.
The above piece is a brief summary of an article written by Agrifood.
You can read the entire article here.
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