In our PREVIOUS ARTICLE, we defined key challenges to integrating automation for bakery producers.
Now the question is:
“What is the right way to implement automation for highest throughput, optimized system efficiency, and best return on investment (ROI)?”
The key to successful, scalable automation begins with a complete assessment of your production line – product infeed to palletizing – with your single-source automation partner. Conducting this assessment provides you insights you didn’t know you needed, and helps determine key questions, and solutions about your automation readiness and the type of automation that will serve you best.
STEP ONE: BEGIN AUTOMATING WITH LABOR
As you may expect, labor is always the first stop on your automation assessment.
How much labor do you need to run a shift on your current line – be it for primary loading, packaging, case packing or palletizing?
If you don’t have an abundance of manual labor to upskill and reallocate from your line, perhaps the investment in full automation isn’t prudent. Value-added automation is always an option in these instances, but you should have an understanding of your ROI timetable for your operations.
In addition to the number of laborers you have on your production line, determining their comfort and experience levels with automation is key to not only a streamlined implementation but a key factor for employee buy-in for automated systems. When you determine which employees are skilled with automation, you can simplify operations and training.
STEP TWO: DETERMINE PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS
Automation won’t simply affect your labor force, but also your packaged products. Determining your product specifications and subsequently automation’s impact on those products is the next stop on your automation roadmap.
Imagine you are packaging over 100 product SKUs on your production line. In this scenario, automation will be less viable for your operations. However, if you were to reduce and refine your production to 10 SKUs to run on an automated line at, you simplify the complexity of your system and achieve greater success.
The key is having packaging equipment and automated systems that can create various types of packaging, yet keep costs, space requirements, and downtime to a minimum. This means standardizing your products in the present, determining your product tolerances (deviations between SKUs), building in repeatability to minimize changeover, predicting what product SKUs could interfere with your production line efficiency, and having a clear vision as to what you want to package in the future.
STEP THREE: WALK BEFORE YOU RUN WITH AUTOMATION WITH A SINGLE-SOURCE SUPPLIER
Once you have determined your product specifications, it is time to understand production speed.
Presently, you may be producing at 60 products per minute (ppm). You may want to scale to 80ppm or 120ppm in the future to meet operational expansion or customer demand.
This is when custom automation is most viable in handling increased production by allocating space for new or upgraded systems. At this stage, working with a single-source supplier who can help you grow to that level on your schedule is essential. A single-source supplier can implement automation to run at that rate in days, not weeks, without downtime or overt capital investment, future-proofing your automated system.
STEP FOUR: SET THE SPACE FOR AUTOMATION
Once you have determined labor needs, product specifications, and production speeds, it’s time to determine automation viability within your facility space.
Ask:
- What does your manual packaging process look like?
- How does your labor force fit into that process?
- Are the roles fulfilling for your workforce?
- Could their skills be repurposed into another role that is more valuable to the company?
- What is the maximum that you can do in the space you have?
You cannot create more facility space, but you can move your applications and product line in different ways to improve ergonomics and still maintain production. The alternative is to buy more facility space or build from scratch (adding hundreds of thousands to the project costs).
STEP FIVE: INVEST IN AUTOMATION: COMPLETE OR AS NEEDED?
Now, it’s time to implement your scalable automation plan.
Is it best to invest in the upfront for automation, or to pay for value-added automation as you go, implementing only where needed to save more on costs?
It is a great question, and much will depend on your unique operations. Yet experts agree investing in full automation is the most effective form of implementation for a variety of reasons:
- Single Supplier, Single Vision: When automating, a single-source supplier and project manager can assess your entire line, work with a single vision, unique to your production line, and save you the most time and investment.
- Single System Construction: Investing upfront allows you to construct a single automated system with less diversity in the line, especially concerning components and installation requirements. Working with multiple suppliers increases the chance the line won’t work as a coherent system.
- Optimized Automation Value: You have the capital to produce the best ROI from your working automation system, rather than trying to reverse-engineer your system later to try and make new automation fit.
- Employee Buy-In: Fully automating increases the chances that your team will only have to learn the equipment and run it together once. Your single automation investment standardizes the electrical and mechanical components, allowing your team to train on changeovers, repairs, and maintenance in real time.
- Full Space Commitment: Automating your production line fully requires full facility space commitment from the onset. If you automate at several different intervals, you run the risk of not having the space available, losing efficiency and increasing downtime.
- Finalized Automation: Your automated system is delivered to you and installed after being factory tested and optimized before production begins. This decreases installation time and unscheduled downtime, as well as increasing your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) (1% improvement worth $2 million on average).
STEP SIX: PICK LOW-HANGING AUTOMATION FRUIT
Makes sense.
Yet, what can you do with automation if full, upfront capital investment is not possible?
Initial investment for full, customized automation can cost anywhere between $1-$2 million. Is automation possible without such investiture?
Yes.
Automating your line is about finding the “low-hanging fruit” of your production, simplifying processes where you can with value-added automation, and getting the best ROI for your investment.
Ask yourself:
“What is the simplest thing I want to do and the simplest way I can do it?”
This means determining the simplest production process AND how you could save money executing that process if it were automated. This includes:
- Reducing your system footprint
- Removing manual labor from your production line
- Implementing low-cost automation
- Reducing the required space in your facilities
Let’s look at an example. If you have allocated capital for automation investment and the ROI makes sense in the timeframe you want, you could start with cost-effective robotics, like COBOTS for pick-and-place tasks. This type of automation not only removes up to 10 laborers from your line but allows for ROI in 3-4 months (on average).
Not only does this investment cost less and allows you to break into automation, it provides reliable data you can use to show progress to decision makers and help them make the decision to find the capital for full investment.
Other examples of “low-hanging fruit” for bakery automation include gravity case packing and palletizing – automated systems that lower the cost for automation and show significant savings in terms of labor, safety, and ergonomics.
STEP SEVEN: MEASURE AUTOMATION SUCCESS WITH DATA
No process, however effective, can be proven without data.
When determining the success of automation, there are key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance benchmarks you can measure to prove project success and allow for continuous improvement:
- New Labor Requirements: How many labor resources does it take to run your production line now with automation?
- New Efficiency Standards: What is the level of line efficiency? Are you using an OEE system or sub-system to collect and measure this quantifiable data? OEE systems capture and report efficiency data in real time, reasons for downtime, and any discrepancies in timing in production (late, early, breaks, etc.). You want to use this data to make positive changes or predict downtime requirements for service and maintenance.
- Changeover Times: What is your time for changeovers? Once per shift, or is it five to six times per shift? How simple is the changeover process? Is it a matter of pushing buttons, changing tooling and grippers, or hand packing until the line is clear for the next shift? Lower changeover times are preferrable, as it shows improved efficiency.
- Failure Models: What are they? If there is a failure on your production line, how much time does it take to recuperate? For longer periods, what is the manual production process like before your production line is back online.
STEP EIGHT: CHOOSE THE RIGHT AUTOMATION PARTNER
The final step to successfully integrating automation into your production line is choosing the right partner for your custom project. This choice should always come down to a single-source supplier who adopts a collaborative approach to implementing automation into your production at whatever stages its truly needed.
Why a single-source supplier? How can you distinguish one from the other?
The perfect partner always begins with the detailed assessment of your line:
- How does your plant work?
- How does your product move across your line?
- What equipment do you need?
- How can we automate this equipment across multiple shifts with minimal downtime?
Your automation partner will always work with you to collect this essential information then provide customized automation strategy, including installation, training and onboarding, and aftersales maintenance, service, and support options according to your unique needs.
You’ll know you have the automation partner you need when your automation system makes sense to you on all fronts – ROI, labor, efficiency – and you see how they simplified your process and enhanced reliability, now and in the future.
ALL-BUT GUARANTEED SUCCESS WITH INTEGRATED AUTOMATION
The global need for packaging automation grows exponentially, year over year, as producers continue to see the value in its adoption. But despite innovation, persistent challenges such as labor, ROI, speed and efficiency gains, and compatibility with legacy equipment continue to present hurdles for full-scale adoption.
Forward-thinking producers see the forest through the trees, choosing to implement automation at some or every interval, trusting to its ability to address and overcome these challenges in the short and long term to achieve future proof production success.
All that’s needed now is an automation partner to provide the custom insight, equipment, support, and advantages integrating automation can bring and a willingness to see the fruition of the future come to life in present production.
Contact Harpak-ULMA Packaging and let us be that partner for you.
Interested in designing your own automation road map? Watch the on-demand webinar “Breaking Into Automation: Baking’s Roadmap to Optimized Efficiency, Higher Profits, and Scalable Growth,” featuring Josh Becker, Bakery & Confection Segment Manager, and John Weddleton, Automation Product Manager, from the American Society of Bakers (ASB).
