Automation: The Competitive Edge for Food Industry Leaders

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Companies in the food industry can gain efficiency, improve product safety and quality, and minimize waste with today’s versatile automation systems. As your partner in automation, JHFOSTER is an expert in food-grade automated solutions that can help food processors overcome skilled labor shortages and supply chain challenges, while cutting costs and maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.

What is Automation in the Food Industry?

In this sector, automation involves the integration of robotics, control systems (such as PLCs and sensors), and software to monitor, control, and optimize processes from raw ingredient intake to assembly to final packaging and palletizing.

Automation can be applied to material handling; precision processes such as assembly, cutting, dicing, and dispensing; packaging; and palletizing tasks to make these operations more efficient, sanitary, and cost-effective.

The Benefits of Automation in the Food Industry

The food industry faces stiff competition and tight margins, which makes efficient production, strict quality control, and regulatory compliance essential to success. Adopting automated technologies can help achieve these goals. Here’s how:

Maximum efficiency: Automation helps alleviate bottlenecks by completing work faster and with more consistency and reliability than human workers. The increase in speed reduces downtime and boosts throughput, while consistency removes product variability and minimizes waste. Automation can run 24/7 during times of peak demand.

Improved quality: Quality control is essential to produce food that is safe for consumers. Consistency in process and quality inspections can vary during shift changes and among individual workers, but automation standardizes processes and quality control because it is precise and programmed to perform each step with repeatable accuracy.

Greater flexibility: From the introduction of new products to changing regulatory requirements, food processors must be agile. Today’s automation is easier to reprogram and repurpose, providing the flexibility needed to keep up with dynamic product lines, compliance changes, seasonal demands, and changing consumer preferences.

Improved sanitation: The fewer human workers involved in the process, the lower the risk of introducing contamination. Automation limits human contact with food items during processing and packaging. Automated equipment customized for food processing offers hygienic designs, with smooth, bacteria-resistant surfaces and Ingress Protection (IP) ratings to withstand frequent, high-pressure washdown procedures, ensuring proper sanitation, food safety, and regulatory compliance.

Enhanced safety: Mixers, cutters, and fast-moving material handling equipment all pose safety hazards. Automating these processes reduces the risk of injuries, as well as the costs associated with workers’ comp claims and lost labor due to injury.

Lower operating costs: The cost of running automated equipment is often lower than hiring, training, and retaining employees to perform the same tasks manually. And, due to the increased speed and precision of automation, throughput, safety, and quality will increase, while scrap and waste decrease.  

Automation Applications in the Food Industry

From the farm to manufacturing to preparing products for store shelves, automated equipment is finding its way into the food industry in a range of applications.

Robotics in Agriculture

Robots equipped with the right end-of-arm tooling can gently, but quickly and accurately, pick and sort soft produce and vegetables, and collect eggs.

Robotics in Food Manufacturing

Many food processing applications can benefit from automation, including:

• Cleaning and categorizing different food products into containers for further processing.
• Cutting, slicing, and dicing fruits, vegetables, and meats in preparation for processing or freezing.
• Assembling food products such as sandwiches and frozen pizzas.
• Dispensing icing to decorate baked goods or condiments for packaged sandwiches and salads.
• De-panning frozen meals, meats, baked goods, beverages, dairy products, or other items into trays or bottles and placing lids.
• Food quality/safety inspections.
• Machine tending of semi-automated food processing machines.
• Packaging products into containers, bottles, and boxes, and case packing.
• Palletizing cases for storage or shipment.

Automation Technologies Used in the Food and Beverage Industry

Several key technologies have the power to optimize food and beverage manufacturing.

Collaborative Robots (Cobots

A new generation of industrial robots, collaborative robots (or cobots), offers built-in safety features that allow them to work alongside human employees without the need for expensive safety guarding or infrastructure changes. Cobots can accomplish tasks such as assembly, packaging, and quality inspection of food products, boosting productivity, quality, and efficiency in operations.

Packaging Technologies

Pick-and-place cobots are used to move products from one location to another or pick food products from a moving assembly line and take them to a packaging area. Cobots and other automated packaging solutions can be used to pack products quickly and accurately into boxes, create boxes from cardboard sheets, or pack finished/packaged food products into cases, increasing throughput and ensuring quality, accuracy, and consistency.

Robotic Palletizers

Robotic palletizers increase the efficiency of placing cases onto pallets to prepare for storage, transportation, and shipping, reducing bottlenecks, ensuring accuracy, and minimizing injuries to human workers by eliminating the need for heavy lifting and repetitive motions.

Why Automation is Growing in the Food and Beverage Industry

Food processing is a highly competitive industry facing tight margins, shortages of skilled workers, supply chain challenges, and an ever-changing regulatory landscape, but automation has the power to overcome these obstacles.

The higher speeds minimize bottlenecks, helping to increase efficiency, while consistent, repeatable high-volume operation ensures quality and reduces scrap and waste.

When properly designed with hygienic surfaces and the right IP ratings, automation fosters compliance with regulatory requirements for sanitization, and the addition of modern Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as sensors and software for real-time monitoring, satisfies traceability requirements, enhancing compliance, food safety, and food quality.

All these advantages provide cost savings while also boosting throughput, food safety, quality, and compliance, giving automated food and beverage operations an advantage over the competition.

JHFOSTER automation experts have the food industry experience required to help evaluate your operation and design and integrate a customized automation solution that gives your business the competitive edge needed to succeed in the sector. Contact us today to learn more about how automation can maximize your efficiency and quality and support your food safety and compliance efforts.

• Senior Vice President of Automation, Tavoron

  Scott Wojciak, a seasoned executive with deep expertise in industrial automation and distribution, serves as Senior Vice President of Automation at Tavoron. He previously led the Fluid Power, Automation, and Engineered Solutions Division at Singer Industrial and held leadership roles at BW Rogers, including Vice President of Sales, Director of Sales, and Regional Business Unit Manager. Known for his results-driven approach and customer-focused leadership, Scott has spent his entire career advancing commercial strategy and operational performance across the automation sector. He began his career as a Sales Engineer and earned BW Rogers’ Salesman of the Year award early in his tenure.

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