Automation
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Cimcorp MultiPick robotic material handling

Field Report

Bakery improves fulfillment time by automating headquarters warehouse

The bakery also reduced space utilization by 50 percent and decreased labor by 30 percent

Wayne Labs, Senior Contributing Technical Editor

January 30, 2020

Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe Inc. finds the summer season really good for business—except mostly manual practices in the warehouse put a real crimp on the way the company would really like to handle the distribution side of its supply chain.

Tech Update

Employing wireless sensors without a clear goal could prove inefficient

Wayne Labs

January 22, 2020

How do you implement a sensor-based IIoT system that can fulfill your needs now and into the future?

Robotics

Palletizing cobots handle tea, ease workload

Nestlé needed a robust, precise and user-friendly cobotic solution—one that could handle pallet stability.

Wayne Labs

December 17, 2019

Nestlé Suisse SA in Orbe, Switzerland, a facility producing tea in capsules under the well-known brand of Special.T, was in a bind as it looked for a cobotic palletizing solution. Not only was accurate placement of cartons necessary, the robots had to work safely among people.

Pet Food Series

Tomorrow’s pet food plant: What it takes to stay competitive

Plants of the future will rely on automation to produce consistent safe quality pet foods

Wayne Labs

December 13, 2019

What does the modern, competitive pet food plant of the future look like? What are its key design considerations to make it fast, efficient and safe (e.g., product flow, building, internal and external environmental considerations, waste streams, automation, equipment, etc.)?

Automation

Are you and your control systems ready for Windows 10?

Microsoft will drop support of Windows 7 in January 2020

Wayne Labs

December 10, 2019

Windows 7 to 10 upgrades may not be so difficult—so upgrade to stay secure.

Wonderful Pistachios' new automated production facility

Automation

Wonderful Pistachios meets global demand with new automated production facility

Producer chooses Allen-Bradley control system over a home-brew motor control center

Wayne Labs

December 2, 2019

The choice of a control solution collaborator was straightforward for Wonderful Pistachios, which has worked with Rockwell Automation for more than 20 years.

Tech Update

PLCs and controllers are being used as intelligent gateways to IIoT

Wayne Labs

October 16, 2019

PLCs/PACs are the unseen workhorses in our processes and material handling/packaging equipment today.

The State of Food Manufacturing

2019 State of Food Manufacturing Survey

Food Engineering’s annual survey of the industry shows efficiency is top of mind for food and beverage processors

Casey Laughman

October 7, 2019

Since 2014, respondents to Food Engineering’s annual State of Food Manufacturing survey have ranked automation as the No. 1 trend affecting the industry—until this year.

Automation

PLCs, PACs and IPCs: Skip the IIoT acronym and get on with business

PLCs, IPCs and PACs have always been networked, so what role does IIoT really play in the overall manufacturing environment?

Wayne Labs

September 5, 2019

In a Tech Update feature headlined “PLCs/PACs: Keys to the IIoT kingdom,” we looked at programmable controllers (PLCs), programmable automation controllers (PACs) and to some extent industrial PCs (IPCs), the latter of which can certainly be applied to most any level of control—e.g., discrete, PID, batch, etc. We considered new functionality in today’s controllers, internal operating systems, I/O capabilities, security and networking—both at the fieldbus/controls level (OT) and IT-side connections.

Big Data

Drowning in a sea of data

We’re told to collect as much data from our processes as we can, and there’s practically infinite storage space in the cloud—but how do you make sense of all this data?

Wayne Labs

August 19, 2019

With automation and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), it’s now easier than ever to collect data and monitor production—all this in the name of managing food quality and food safety. But, with multiple sites and lines supplying data around the clock, any staff would be all but overwhelmed—without a direction in where to focus their process management efforts.

On Demand Driven by climate goals, business risk, client interest, and resilience considerations, food and beverage companies are increasingly turning their attention to decarbonizing their production processes.

Driven by climate goals, business risk, client interest, and resilience considerations, food and beverage companies are increasingly turning their attention to decarbonizing their production processes.