Automation – the word is everywhere in the food and beverage business – but many growing companies are looking for ways to maximize investments and add automation alongside plant renovations or expansions.

With more than 25 years of experience in food processing, cold storage and industrial manufacturing, John Koury, consulting architect heads up A M King’s design group and said automation can be “a big blanket statement,” but F&B companies should try to narrow their focus as much as possible. 

“I think the lowest hanging fruit is, is packaging. It's the easiest to implement, because you were probably already doing some form of packaging that had some rudimentary form of automation in it. The opportunities to have some efficiencies are really strong for that. And then, as you kind of go upstream in the process, it gets more and more complicated,” Koury said. 

While greenfield developments or large scale projects offer opportunities for widespread automation, most F&B companies add automation incrementally. 

“Maybe they're going to make a major investment and have a new facility, and it'll be state of the art, and, you know, have all of this stuff. But, that's just one part of the world. The middle are, especially in the food world, comprised of people that probably started their business in their kitchen or in their garage, or something like that,” Koury said. 

Adding Automation to Existing Cold Food Facilities

Automation – the word is everywhere in the food and beverage business – but many companies are looking for a starting point.

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Manufacturers and processors in the midst of scaling often come to a tipping point where automation has the potential to expand production and provide efficiencies but they must be weighed against the “values and the procedures that have gotten your company to this point,” he said. “The advice I would give would be, be specific and pinpoint where it is that you see in your process that you can implement automation." 

For example, one food processor Koury worked with sells a product that requires variation.  

“The fact that this piece of bacon is different than this piece, is placed differently than the other sandwich’s piece of bacon, you know that's part of what they're selling is the fact that these are all individually made. And, if you have an automated system, everything's probably going to look exactly the same,” he said. 

When it comes to food plant or cold storage expansions, the business is usually operational during construction.

“Not only do you have the equipment, but you have all the utilities that connect to it. You have employee workflow, and in the case of a food plant, it's especially important to make sure you're not introducing easy places for the ongoing processes to be contaminated,” Koury said. “It's complicated. I mean, literally and figuratively, there's a lot of moving parts.” 

There are still long lead times on items like electrical switchgear required for the equipment and the automation equipment itself. It can take anywhere between six and 18 months to design and implement an expansion for automation, Koury said. 

For more on automation in cold food facilities, listen to the podcast in the player above or download it wherever you get your podcasts.