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Improving performance in food & beverage manufacturing conference review special
New conference and exhibition proves a big hit
On the 17th October Mitsubishi Electric hosted our inaugural food & beverage conference and exhibition in Hatfield. The main theme was "Improving performance in food & beverage manufacturing". The presentation topics included robotics and automation in the food industry, motion technologies, maintenance and support, OEE (Overall equipment effectiveness) and an industry research review from the main sponsor Food Processing magazine.
 The presentations and sessions were given from industry leading experts who have combined food & beverage industry knowledge approaching 100 years of experience. Delegates were able to take advantage of the exhibition area where food and beverage industry related products and solutions were on display. During the lunch time break the Mitsubishi Electric Customer Technology Centre showroom was available for delegates to view and discuss automation technologies in working applications including the new food safe robot from Mitsubishi Electric:
Food safe robot website or watch the video at Food safe robot cake decoration video
The interest and feedback from the attendees and exhibitors has been so positive and encouraging we have already started planning for next year's event and have set a provisional time frame of early July 2013. We have a range of topics that have been suggested which include legislation, energy reduction, new technologies and the inevitable case studies.
If any readers of this article would like to contribute to case studies or put forward presentation information for consideration in next year's event please contact Jeremy Shinton at automation@meuk.mee.com
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Benefits of automation and robotics in the food & beverage industry
PPMA Group
Chris Buxton of the PPMA opened the proceedings with an overview of the UK food industry and looked at the adoption of robots and automation in the UK compared to the rest of Europe.
Chris outlined the industries main challenges as skills and labour shortages, food shortages, food prices and environmental pressures. One core theme for improvement throughout the industry is productivity and efficiency gains, an area where automation and robots are intrinsically linked.
Chris ended by providing information on the government funded scheme "Automation Manufacturing" which aims to educate, raise awareness and provide impartial advice and financial support to businesses interested in automation.
For more information go to Automating Manufacturing Programme |
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Robot arm cuts cleanly
Greencore Cakes and Desserts
Graham Thomas of Greencore Cakes and Desserts presentation was based on a case study that has proven to it's worth within the cake manufacturing plant. The project was based on improving the cutting motion used by machinery on iced fruit cake bars, with the aim of stopping fruit smearing on the cut icing face.
The solution was to use a robotic arm with an ultrasonic cutting blade to provide the complex slicing motion required. Graham emphasised the importance of building and trialling solutions before their implementation, from the scaled down test version of the solution, the concept was proven to work.
Graham concluded by commenting that this was his first project using robots and the quality of the solution and the reduction in cost would encourage him to use them again in the future. |
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Pressure-less collation and queuing and high accuracy batter depositing
Western Mechanical Handling (WMH)
David Dearing of WMH spoke about two WMH case studies, which had recent coverage in the automation and food press. The first case study addressed the customer and environmental drive to reduce packaging and waste in a quiche manufacturing process. The new flan cases are now made from a paper material and are more prone to spillages if not handled correctly. The new collation system addressed these issues and prevented waste and reduced clean down times.
To read more go to: Smart Conveyor Case Study
The second case study addressed the issue of "give away" within a Yorkshire pudding manufacture. David discussed the multi-lane, high throughput depositing system used to make Yorkshire Puddings. The system needed to be flexible to meet different deposit weights and provide a non-drip feature to stop excess batter from burning on the tray during cooking and reduce cleaning times.
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Legacy control systems and managing risk
Niscam Ltd
Adrian Caton of Niscam discussed the issues of de skilling in the food & beverage industry and how to cope with legacy control systems with a view to mitigating the risk of failure.
He discussed how unmanaged or obsolete control systems can threaten consistent production and cause random outage with serious financial ramifications.
Adrian outlined how a strategy was used as a means of preventing control system problems. Short to long term strategies can be implemented to reduce risk.
To lean more go to our System Service website |
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Assissting operational improvements through overall equipment effectiveness
Mitsubishi Electric
David Bean of Mitsubishi Electric discussed Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). The underlying metrics of availability, performance and quality are useful tools used to identify issues within a production process as part of any continuous improvement / lean manufacturing initiative on a manufacturing site. In terms of automation, this presentation identifies the provision of such "manufacturing intelligence" as part of a typical MES supply and discusses its relevance to the food & beverage industry. A worked example of the use of OEE in the analysis of plant data used to improve the availability of a plant asset is presented and then seeks to discuss the benefits of automated data capture providing real time OEE metrics over manual paper or spread sheet based methods.
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Food industry research
Food Processing magazine
David Strydom from Food Processing magazine, who were the main sponsor for the event, opened by introducing Food Processing as a leading trade journal for food manufacturers established in 1931.
David spoke about recent reader research showing that trends have changed quite drastically over the past few years within the food & beverage manufacturing industry. It was Food Processing's most intensive research to date and revealed that food manufacturers want to read/hear/know about the following areas; legislative issues, skills development and training, new technologies, plant maintenance and environmental issues.
The research showed issues such as apprenticeships, innovative ways of delivering quality technical training, new techniques to communicate with end users, long-term asset care of a mature plant
and new innovations that add value are key to food producers.
For more information go to http://www.fponthenet.net/ |
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