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— ABB ROBOTICS

The Great Robot Recipe BookHow robots are helping bakeries to rise up

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— Contents

Introduction 03

01 Overview 04The age of changeable markets 05

02 Flexibility 07 Dulcesol 08Signature Flatbreads 11De Bakker 14Interbanket 17

03 Reduced Costs 20 J&J Snack Foods 21Roland Murten 24

04 Productivity 27 Village Bakery 28

05 Conclusion 31

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— Introduction

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Long gone are the days when British bakeries had little to worry about other than the slicing and wrapping of their loaves. Today’s bakeries have to satisfy a population that’s rising like the yeast in their dough. An explosion of tastes, cultural backgrounds, lifestyle choices and bank balances are now browsing the bakery section.

So how do UK bakers manage to cater to such a myriad of appetites whilst keeping up with new trends, maximising output and maintaining the highest levels of productivity? The answer is simple - through finding new ways to become more efficient.

Staying ahead of the competition means doing things differently. In this Great Robot Recipe Book, we will show you how other bakeries in the UK and around the world have increased flexibility, improved productivity and reduced costs using robot technology.

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— 01 Overview

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— OVERVIEW

The age of changeable markets How robots help UK bakers rise to the occasion

When bakeries went from street corner to supermarkets, the pressure was on for UK manufacturers of baked goods to ramp up production to meet the demands of the growing population. Such call for variety means that production processes need to be inherently flexible, allowing manufacturers to switchover batches at short notice, potentially a number of times throughout the day.

Another prevalent issue for UK bakeries is costs. The National Living Wage continues to rise and with bakery ingredients such as wheat and sugar rising significantly in the last few years, UK bakeries must find a way to

maintain quality and increase flexibility while simultaneously keeping down costs.

Robots help to save through performing many of the processes which are typically performed manually in a bakery environment. For example, picking, placing and sorting products can be performed by robots at high speed, maximising throughput and achieving higher levels of productivity. Many examples of this can be found within this recipe book.

Robots can also help in other areas of the process such as the cutting and decorating of bakery

products. Specialist robot system integrators have discovered ways to efficiently cut products such as cakes and pies in a variety of shapes using robots tooled with ultrasonic blades.

Often bakeries require skilled staff to perform such intricate processes such as decorating and personalising products but these skills are getting harder to find. Robots can also undertake these stages in production, increasing productivity levels by up to 1000%.

—Renata Bartekova, Business Development Manager, Food & Beverage

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— OVERVIEW

The age of changeable markets How robots help UK bakers rise to the occasion

Furthermore, robot cutting technologies result in less wastage, saving expenditure on highly priced ingredients. When manual labour is replaced by robot technology, staff can be moved to other areas of the business which are more rewarding and creative, leading to a higher retention of staff. Recruitment costs alone are substantial, especially in the bakery industry where a high turnover of staff is common.

As markets continue to evolve, adopting flexible solutions is imperative for UK bakeries to remain competitive. Robot technology is highly adaptable with a wide range of models to suit many bakery processes from picking through to palletising.

UK bakeries can rise to the occasion through investing in robots to achieve higher levels of flexibility, productivity and quality as well as save on wastage, recruitment and downtime.

To find out more about how robots could increase flexibility at your bakery, read our recipes for robot automation in bakeries in this e-book. Once you have found a recipe that suits you, feel free to get in touch by clicking the button below. We’ll soon respond to discuss how we can help you to make the recipe for success a reality.

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Ready, Steady, Bake!

—Renata Bartekova, Business Development Manager, Food & Beverage

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— 02 Flexibility

Ingredients:• Robot system• Strong management• Long term strategy• A need for productivity• A hunger for competitivity

Ideal for bakery factories which have short production runs or various products in production at one time.

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— CHALLENGE

Dulcesol

• Dulcesol produces delicate pastries which require delicate handling

• The baker began experiencing problems with finding skilled staff to package the products

• Dulcesol produces a great variety of pastries which come down the conveyor belt destined for several different packaging formats

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• A solution had to be able to handle them as gently as a human would and be adaptable enough to handle several packaging tasks simultaneously

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— SOLUTION

Dulcesol

• An ABB FlexPicker was introduced to package chocolate and cream-filled puff pastry rolls known as napolitanas

• 24,000 napolitanas are turned out each hour which is equal to 400 per minute

• The cakes come down the conveyor belt and are picked from their molds by a servo-driven needle extraction system

• They are primary wrapped and introduced to the race track

• A PLC-based management system ‘tells’ the robot when the packages are ready to be picked up once they are all in one place

• The robot picks the napolitanas four at a time by means of suction pads

• It then places them into plastic multi-pack trays

• In July 2007 an additional six IRB 340 robots were installed on the croissants line to pick and place two sizes of croissant into a variety of plastic trays

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— BENEFITS

Dulcesol

• Production line efficiency has risen by 15%

• In seven months ROI was achieved on the napolitana production line

• ROI was achieved in 18 months on the croissants production line

• There has been an improved quality of work for employees

• There is a smaller footprint where robots are mounted above the conveyor belt

• Improved hygiene conditions • Increased flexibility• Fewer sick days taken – sick

days were previously taken due to conditions such as tendonitus

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— CHALLENGE

Signature Flatbreads

• Honeytop Speciality Foods in Dunstable, Bedfordshire produces Naan as well as speciality flatbreads and pancakes

• Honeytop production has very tight turnaround times prompting the need to improve productivity with daily orders that are expected to be out to the depots within 12 hours of production

• Honeytop needed to improve hygiene at the plant

• Honeytop approached RG Luma, an ABB robot system integrator to find a solution

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— SOLUTION

Signature Flatbreads

• RG Luma selected ABB FlexPicker robots to be at the heart of the automated system

• The FlexPicker robots are capable of handling 110 picks per minute to ensure all pancakes are picked and stacked quickly and precisely

• FlexPicker robots are part of a robot enclosure which is split into four areas of operation enabling the robots to operate in alternative areas to the preceding robot on the line

• A buffer system operates with the robots picking and placing any extra pancakes on a central shelf before a short stack is identified

• PickMaster 3.2 software helps Honeytop measure progress including the total number of picks and can be used to quickly change production from one product to another

• Integrated within this software are four-gigabit Ethernet cameras. Mounted in front of each robot these are used to locate each pancake’s position on the conveyor

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— BENEFITS

Signature Flatbreads

• Significantly reduced waste levels

• Dramatically reduced turnaround time between products so Honeytop can meet customer deadlines without delay

• Added versatility to the production line which has dramatically reduced the changeover time between each different product again making it easier to meet deadlines

• A number of overheads have been absorbed thanks to low labour costs and improved productivity

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— CHALLENGE

De Bakker

• Dutch bakery De Bakker produces delicately iced cakes called petit fours

• Cakes can be personalised with an elegant monogram for customers

• Performed manually this time-consuming process used to add to the cost and limited the number of petit fours that De Bakker could produce to around 6,000 products using a staff of two

• The company needed a solution which could help increase the production of the popular cakes

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— SOLUTION

De Bakker

• DeBakker approached an automation specialist which proposed using ABB robots and specialised software to perform the job

• Six ABB 6-axis robots are now used to decorate the cakes. Each robot creates 16 designs simultaneously on the pastel-coloured cakes as the second robot adds part of the design in a different colour. There are 21 rows on each pallet.

• The cakes are made using a semi-automated process. They are frozen, sliced into three 1 centimetre layers and placed on the cutting machine to be cut to the required size.

Cream, jam and butter cream are added followed by a new layer of cake, more butter cream and marzipan and then the pallets go into the freezer.

• The robots are then used to add distinctive designs to the top of the cakes in one or two colours. Right now De Bakker has around 20 designs. Designs are changed two or three times a day. The graphics pad and Windows software, dubbed Chococad, enables new designs to be created in a matter of minutes

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— BENEFITS

De Bakker

• A production increase of 30,000 cakes daily with one single person from 6,000 a day using two

• Increased flexibility – the design of the icing can be changed and new designs created in a matter of minutes

• As well as making a quantitive improvement in the production process ABB’s 6-axis robots ensure a consistently high quality

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— CHALLENGE

Interbanket

• Small family-owned company based in Amsterdam

• Supplier of cookies, biscuits and stroop wafels

• Strengths include the ability to respond quickly to the market

• Interbanket exports about 95 to 90 percent of their products

• Interbanket wanted to reduce costs and increase profits without trying to find cheaper raw materials or increasing the sales price

• The biggest challenge is that there was a large amount of cookies which needed to be packaged

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— SOLUTION

Interbanket

• Interbanket came to the conclusion that robot automation was the answer

• They approached machine builder Tehama to help. With years of experience in traditional bakery automation Tehama had just recently began to use robotics

• One line was slated for robotic automation and makes nineteen different kinds of products, packed thirty different ways into a tray, including flat, at an angle of forty-five degrees and at an angle of ninety degrees

• Seven IRB 140 robots are now used after ABB completed some RobotStudio offline virtual computer trials to figure out the best positions for the robots

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— BENEFITS

Interbanket

• Quick changeovers, between just five and ten minutes to complete between two different products

• Less pressure on production staff – robots perform the manual labour and the production staff supervise them

• Lowered labour costs• Improved output• Flexible production• Production output has

increased from 1500 kilos of dough to 3500 kilos of dough

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— 03 Reduced costs

Ingredients:• Robot system• Strong management• Long term strategy• A need for reduced costs whilst still maintaining high quality

Ideal for bakery factories which want to reduce their expenditure on ingredients and labour and reinvest in other areas of the business.

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— CHALLENGE

J&J Snack Foods

• J&J snack foods lies across from the Delaware River in New Jersey, US

• J&J makes 2.1 million pretzels a day

• The operation was labour intensive and J&J wanted to reduce labour costs, improve health and safety and provide extra value to the consumer at zero cost

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— SOLUTION

J&J Snack Foods

• Originally manual workers sorted and picked the pretzels, inserted salt packets and coupons and packaged the product

• Now frozen soft pretzels leave the freezer on a continuous conveyor belt where stationary and rotary brushes make sure the pretzels travel in a single layer. A second, faster belt picks up the pretzels to insure they are spread evenly

• The pretzels are then rolled beneath a high-speed camera or vision cell which takes a picture. The image is sent to a computer where the ABB PickMaster software scans for pretzel quality and position on the belt. It takes fractions of a

second for the software to give the robots detailed instructions about handling each pretzel

• The FlexPicker then picks each pretzel as it comes down the belt (as well as tossing out defective pretzels) and places them in a consistent orientation on the parallel, lugged conveyor. Together the two vision cells and the five robots at J&J Snack Foods can pick and place 250 pretzels a minute

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— BENEFITS

J&J Snack Foods

• Hygiene has significantly improved since the robots have been installed – the robots are encased in stainless steel so they can be hosed down without causing any damage

• Improved quality of work and improved health and safety for employees. The staff were given hands-on training before the robots were installed on the shop floor so that they felt a part of the project. Vu Duc, a worker on the line, commented

“These new machines are very safe whereas the old machines were constantly breaking down and I was always fixing something.”

• Payback is projected at just over two years through the reduced labour costs gained from repositioning 27 full-time employees, reduced maintenance downtime and lower production costs

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— CHALLENGE

Roland Murten

• Roland Murten in Switzerland produces pretzels which have been popular snacks for years

• The pretzels used to come in boxes and often this meant that some of the pretzels would get broken

• Roland Murten wanted to improve product quality whilst also reducing costs wasted on ingredients used in defective products

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— SOLUTION

Roland Murten

• The process begins with raw ingredients being piped across the factory, weighed, mixed and kneaded into dough. The dough is then fed in two kilogram lumps into one of the 12 machines that give the pretzels their traditional shape. Once shaped they are evenly distributed on the conveyor belt. These are then dipped in a bath of sodium hydroxide, sprinkled with coarse grains of salt and then placed in the oven

• Once baked, six ABB robots set up diagonally opposite each other get to work lifting the pretzels by their loops and

laying them in plastic containers. Each robot has a camera focused on the conveyor belt which transmits the coordinates of each individual pretzel to a computer

• This computer uses PickMaster software to perform the picking with precision as well as calculate the pretzel within the shortest distance

• Rather than pick those that come first on the conveyor the robot arm always takes the pretzel nearest to it for increased speed

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— BENEFITS

Roland Murten

• The new system is very quiet compared to the old one which was extremely noisy and used air to suck the pretzels to the packaging

• The precision of the technology means that fewer pretzels are broken than previously. This is extremely important for the productivity and profitability of the whole enterprise

• Beforehand staff had to be taken away from other areas of the process to perform quality control checks. Because there are fewer breakages, fewer people are needed to check the packaged pretzels and replace the broken ones by hand

• The actual reduction in broken pretzels is from between 10 and 12 percent to about 4 percent

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— 04 Productivity

Ingredients:• Robot system• Strong management• Long term strategy• A need for productivity whilst still maintaining high quality

Ideal for bakery factories which want to increase production in order to meet rising customer demands.

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— CHALLENGE

Village Bakery

• Welsh baker Village Bakery Group wanted to increase production handling capability on its packaging line whilst maintaining very high quality standards

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— SOLUTION

Village Bakery

• Village Bakery approached RM Group, an ABB robot system integrator, to provide a solution

• The robot system incorporates 10 ABB FlexPicker IRB 360s with PickMaster 3 control, split into two banks of five. This also incorporates six ABB high resolution vision systems which boost accuracy and provide a high degree of quality inspection for shape and colour

• The process begins with pancakes being conveyed away from the customers cooling conveyor and split between the two banks of five robot cells. Each robot is equipped with a pick-up head which picks up the individual pancakes and places them on the flow wrapper infeed conveyors

• Smart logic programming makes sure that all of the packs entering the flow wrappers are correctly filled

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— BENEFITS

Village Bakery

• Village Bakery was kept fully advised and involved with trials at the design & development stage

• The robot system was efficiently installed with minimal disruption to the day to day operation at Village Bakery

• The robot system has enabled Village Bakery to improve the quality and consistency for the customer whilst increasing productivity, enabling the bakery products manufacturer to meet peek deadlines

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— 05 Conclusion

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— CONCLUSION

Great British bakers will improve production through robotics

Evidence from bakers at home and abroad clearly suggests that robots can bring a wide range of benefits to production. These include:

• Improved efficiency• Return on investment

achieved in a short timeframe – typically between 1 to 2 years

• Improved health and safety and quality of work for employees

• Smaller footprint• Reduced wastage• Reduced turnaround time

between products• Faster production• Increased flexibility• Reduced labour costs• Increased productivity• Improved quality• Greater customer satisfaction

If UK bakeries wish to prepare for a manufacturing landscape which is evolving at a mile a minute, robot automation is the way forward. With customers expecting a wider variety of products, a growing trend for personalisation and fast delivery times, robot automation is a

solution which can support UK bakeries in all of these areas and provide the strong foundations for a bakery business that is future-proof.

If you’re ready, click the button.

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Ready, Steady, Bake!—Renata Bartekova, Business Development Manager, Food & Beverage

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