The names “food processing” and “food manufacturing” are umbrella terms for an array of companies focused on transforming agricultural products into foods and beverages for human consumption. While these organizations produce various items, they have one thing in common: All can benefit from implementing industrial manipulators.
This article lists and explains the challenges food processing companies face. It also describes how customized industrial manipulator solutions can (and do) help them overcome these obstacles and operate safer, more efficiently, and, ultimately, more profitably.
Industry Overview
From small-scale artisanal producers to multinational corporations, the food processing industry encompasses a wide range of businesses, including:
- Primary processors. These companies handle the initial processing of raw agricultural commodities, such as cleaning and sorting fruits and vegetables, milling grains, and slaughtering animals.
- Secondary processors. They take the output of primary processors and transform it into finished food products, such as baked goods, canned vegetables, dairy products, and processed meats.
- Beverage manufacturers. This sector produces many types of drinks, including soft drinks, juices, alcoholic beverages, and bottled water.
- Food packaging companies. These businesses specialize in packaging food products for distribution and sale, ensuring they are protected, preserved, and presented attractively.
Some food manufacturers specialize in one area, while others handle all the different disciplines. Several processes and operations are involved in producing foods and beverages, such as:
- Material handling. This includes tasks like lifting and moving heavy sacks of ingredients, transporting raw materials between processing stations, and loading finished products onto pallets or trucks. These activities are essential but can be physically demanding and pose ergonomic risks to workers.
- Ingredient preparation. Many food products require components that are prepared to precise tolerances for how they’re cut, sliced, diced, mashed, ground, etc. Achieving the desired characteristics can be challenging with manual labor, especially for delicate or irregularly shaped items.
- Mixing and blending. Creating food products that consistently meet quality standards requires precise mixing and blending of ingredients. This can be time-consuming and labor-intensive work, especially when dealing with large batches.
- Cooking and baking. Temperature control and timing are critical in these processes. Variations can lead to inconsistencies in product quality, affecting taste, texture, and appearance.
- Distribution prep. Ensuring food products are packaged correctly to maintain freshness, prevent contamination, and meet labeling requirements is essential. This process often involves repetitive motions and can be prone to errors.
In addition to the specific challenges noted above, food processing companies face several other high-level issues. Employee safety must be every company’s top priority. In the food manufacturing industry, there is no shortage of risks, from heavy lifting and repetitive motions to potential injuries from blades and other sharp objects.
Labor shortages are also common in this industry (and many others) today for several reasons, including the shift in focus by job seekers to the “information economy” and away from physically demanding and repetitive work.
Quality control is another challenge for these companies. They must produce goods that appeal to consumers while adhering to strict safety and hygiene standards.
Finally, food manufacturers — like all manufacturers — have to operate efficiently. Completing more work with less time and effort contributes directly to profitability.
Application in Food Processing
Lift-assist devices, material handlers, and other industrial manipulators are used in food processing operations in a wide variety of ways. In fact, people who have never researched these solutions or haven’t checked them out in several years often are surprised at how they’ve evolved. From the array of tools that can be attached to the end of the articulating arms to their ever-increasing lifting capabilities, these devices can move and manipulate just about anything involved in a food manufacturing process.
Some of the many configurations include:
- Hook-like attachments for lifting large wheels of cheese
- Suction devices that can pick up heavy bags of dry material or large bottles
- Strong metal posts that go into the center holes in huge rolls of paper or plastic to lift them
- Huge clamping attachments that can grasp large metal drums or boxes of supplies or finished products
- A system for lifting several weighty pails of material at once
There are even highly specialized devices like ham molds!
Without industrial manipulators, many of the tasks above would require multiple team members working together. Even then, there would be the high risk of injury that’s always present when groups try to manage heavy or awkward items. And, of course, with each additional person called in to help with a task, the cost of that operation increases significantly while the productivity of the tasks team members had been doing drops dramatically.
The counterpoint to that labor-intensive, often chaotic scenario is one where a single employee can do more than just lift and move the item in question without assistance. They can also reorient it in mid-lift if needed with minimal effort and almost no risk of personal injury or property damage. If you’ve ever been involved in a “group lift” situation where you need to reposition the item before placing it at its destination, you know those shifts can be extremely dangerous!
Where, specifically, will you find companies using industrial manipulators? Some of the many examples include:
- Meat processing. Lift-assist devices are used to handle heavy carcasses and cuts of meat, reducing the risk of worker injuries. Material handlers can also assist with tasks like deboning, trimming, and portioning.
- Bakery and confectionery. Industrial manipulators can help with jobs like moving large containers of ingredients, mixing tubs of dough, and carrying trays of finished products.
- Fruit and vegetable processing. Systems can be designed to gently handle delicate produce, sorting, washing, and packaging it without damage.
- Dairy production. Companies use industrial manipulators to lift and move heavy cheese blocks, fill and seal milk containers, and palletize finished products.
- Beverage manufacturing. Industrial manipulators can handle tasks like filling bottles and cans, labeling, and packing them into cases.
How Customization Addresses Specific Food Processing Industry Needs
As impressive as an industrial manipulator’s standard capabilities are, these devices are even more valuable when our team works with you to turn systems into solutions. Our deep expertise in manipulators and manufacturing operations, coupled with your knowledge of your business operations, can produce remarkable results.
We don’t simply look for places to integrate devices into workflows. That’s easy since they can help virtually anywhere in a manufacturing process. Our goal is to identify the points where adding a tailored lift-assist or material-handling solution will benefit workers and the company the most. That could be in receiving raw materials, on the production line, in preparing goods for shipping, or all of these and other operational areas.
Food processing company owners and decision-makers who work with Dalmec get more than cutting-edge technology; they benefit from the knowledge of the industry’s most skilled and experienced process optimization professionals.
Industrial Manipulators in Food Processing: Emerging Trends and Future Innovations
As populations grow and world demand for foods and beverages continues to rise rapidly, manufacturers and processors will have to work diligently to ensure that capacities keep pace with needs. Industrial manipulators will be foundational to those efforts.
With ongoing innovations, we can anticipate even more sophisticated machines capable of handling complex tasks with greater autonomy and precision. This will further enhance productivity, safety, and quality in the food processing sector, ensuring consumers have uninterrupted access to safe, high-quality food products.
Final Thoughts
Customized solutions leveraging the strength, precision, and flexibility of industrial manipulators are ideal for food processing environments. They extend the capabilities of employees, enabling them to work more safely, efficiently, and productively to keep their companies ahead of the world’s food and beverage requirements.
What are your company’s process pain points, and how could you benefit from a Dalmec solution? Contact us today to discuss your objectives and how we can help you meet or exceed them!
Whether you’re looking to implement a solution soon or simply want to understand the available options, a conversation with one of our experts is an excellent place to start and time well spent.
