Automation
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Sidel cobots give Nestlé a hand
Robotics

Palletizing cobots handle tea, ease workload

Nestlé needed a robust, precise and user-friendly cobotic solution—one that could handle pallet stability.
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Wayne Labs
December 17, 2019
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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.
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DogStar Kitchens
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
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Wayne Labs
December 13, 2019
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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.)?


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processing line
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
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Casey Laughman
October 7, 2019
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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.
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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?
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Wayne Labs
September 5, 2019
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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.


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Doug Fair
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?
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Wayne Labs
August 19, 2019
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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.


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