Increasing production speed while keeping rejects low and quality consistent—and maintaining food safety—is the goal of every food and beverage processor. Today, many food processors look toward automation to provide the solutions needed to attain the necessary throughput to be competitive.
Problem is, while processors can buy off-the-shelf equipment to tackle a variety of automation applications, orchestrating all this equipment to tackle the job from start to finish can eat up a lot of engineering time. Even large food processors with in-house engineering departments will not always have the schedule to execute the integration of a line, especially those lines replete with robots and conveyors, as well as a host of equipment for manufacturing, packaging, labeling, palletizing, etc. that must be flawlessly coordinated. In many cases, automation suppliers won’t take on a complicated and large project without enlisting the help of system integrators and/or engineering house.