APRIL™ Robotics Weighing Station

april.oalgroup.com/weighing

• Automated weighing of dry micro-ingredients.• Works alongside people.• Accuracy of 1g or 1% by weight.

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Rising labour costs and health and safety have made the manual handling and weighing of 25kg1 bags of ingredients uneconomical. Whilst we can automate high usage ingredients with big bag and silo systems, an estimated 62% by labour cost are handled manually.

Health & Safety ComplianceHealth and Safety is a priority for food manufacturers. The nature of the tasks involved means mitigating risk associated with manual handling is on the top of a food manufacturer’s agenda. This is reinforced across the world with regulations that require businesses to assess health and safety risks to their workers.4

Costs relating to work place include:

• Sickness absence.• Higher staff turnover.• Retraining.• Loss of production.• Compensation cases• Increasing insurance premiums.

8,784,000Days lost in the UK in 2016 due to Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders.3

1 Research indicated the 25kg sack is the industry standard.2 Based on a true cost of employment of $28,742 per person per year.

The 25kg Bag Problem in Food Manufacturing

$594,840Average yearly labour costs associated with handling and weighing dry ingredients within a $120 Million turnover convenience food business.2

Rising Labour CostsRising labour costs has been a continual source of concern for food manufacturers globally. In the UK, the introduction of the living wage and concerns over the availability of labour following Brexit have further exacerbated the problem.

Accuracy & TraceabilityManual repetitive tasks such as weighing are highly susceptible to human error. Traceability is often paper based with inherent limitations on ensuring quality.

3 UK HSE Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorder Statistics, Great Britain, 20164 In the UK regulations include: Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992

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APRILTM Logistics

Ingredients In Local Storage

Sifting StationClean BulkContainer

Bulk to Weighing

Weigh OutReceipe to

Dry Mix Bucket

Dry Mixto Process

Clean of Bucket

APRILTM Weighing APRILTM Logistics

Using proven robotic equipment, OAL has designed and developed the first generation of robotic food manufacturing preparation systems.

Automate your Micro-Ingredient Weighing

FlexibleHandle a wide range of dry ingredients.

• Weigh cell typically handles 20 live ingredients (Option for automatic switching and replenishment).

• Automatic cleaning for full traceability.• Deals with free and non free flowing

materials and very adaptable feed rates from 0.5 to 100 grams per sec.

EfficientOptimise your operations.

• Remove manual handling.• Right first time automation using RFID

tags.

ScalableUp to 100 Weigh Stations.

• Centralised configuration and recipe management.

• Deployable in existing factories with minimal infrastructure changes.

Robust 24x7 Productivity• No sick days.• Mean time to failure of 80,000 hours.• Proven robotic systems.

SafeFull Safety Compliance.

• Works collaboratively with people.• Able to avoid static and moving obstacles.

Accurate1g / 1% Weighing Accuracy.

• Weigh 100g loads to an accuracy of 1g.• Weigh loads > 100g to an accuracy of 1% by weight.

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A leading biscuit manufacturer has automated the weighing and batching of its micro ingredients with the APRIL™ Robotics Weighing Station.Operating on a 24x7 basis, previously the biscuit manufacturer manually assembled dry mix batches, with four operators working in the area.

The team fed two manufacturing lines with approximately 200 mixes each 24 hour production cycle. Ingredients included bicarbonate of soda, citric acid, salt, pepper and vanilla powder.The APRIL™ Robotic Weighing Station has fully automated the weighing out of mixes delivering major productivity, efficiency and traceability improvements.

Robotics Expertise and Machine Automation Support provided by our global team.

Transferring from bulk ingredient containers, the APRIL™ system weighs out mixes into 10kg buckets fitted with an RFID tag for identification. For recipes with a larger mix, multiple containers are used.The weigh up time for a bucket is recipe dependent and a function of the weight, number, characteristics and required accuracy of ingredient addition. As a rule of thumb, the robot is designed to match a single operator.A single APRIL™ Weighing Station is best suited to longer run applications with minimal ingredient changes. Under these conditions, the system only requires bulk container replenishment every two to four hours.

For manufacturers making smaller batch runs of a recipe, APRIL™ Logistics automates the transfer of bulk containers and dry mix buckets, enabling the efficient use of more ingredients within a single APRIL™ Weighing Station.APRIL™ Weighing and Logistics utilise collaborative technologies allowing operators to work alongside the system and integration with minimal infrastructure changes.Manufactures can test ingredients at the APRIL™ Robotics Manufacturing Facility. The factory includes testing areas for specific ingredients allowing performance guarantees to be provided.Companies will typically be processing > 1 tonnes of 25 Kg bagged ingredients per day in dry weigh areas and be operating 24 x 7.

Automate your Micro-Ingredient Weighing A Global Collaborative Network

Typical Configuration

40 Countries150 Locations3000 Application Engineers

OAL at a GlanceOAL supply market leading engineering solutions to the food manufacturing industry.

APRIL™ Robotics Production FacilityOAL are building a new state of the art facility to support our APRIL™ Robotics Systems in Peterborough, UK. Join us on Thursday 18th January 2018 for the factory opening and Food Manufacturing 2030 Conference. Learn how robotics will impact your business and get hands on with our robotic systems.

21,876,000Loaves of bread per day manufactured with OAL Dry Material Handling Systems.

19,754,257,437Products Scanned per year using OAL Connected Verification System.

210,000 Tonnes of soups & sauces per hour cooked using OAL Steam Infusion Systems.

Would you like to know more?Contact OAL at:

+44 1733 394 700 | sales@oalgroup.com | april.oalgroup.com

APRIL™ Robotics is committed to increasing the efficiency of food factories by enabling the redeployment of people performing repetitive tasks with robotics. Our team are world leaders in using proven robotic technologies to provide next generation food manufacturing preparation and process systems.

APRIL™ Cooking CellRobotic ingredient handling and processing cell for the automated production of soups, sauces and ready meals.

APRIL™ LogisticsAutomated ingredient and material management logistics. For example, ingredient transfer from storage to weighing.

APRIL™ Weighing StationAutomated weighing and management of micro dry ingredients.

Future DevelopmentsWith £4million funding from Innovate UK, the UK governments Innovation agency and private finance we’re removing all manual operations from food processing.

OAL Connected provides market-leading label and date code verifcation systems installed on over 1,100 packing lines, ensuring full compliance with retailer’s codes of practice. Once protected, food manufacturers can achieve fast payback using the OAL Connected modules to add OEE productivity measurement, connectivity to line equipment and paperless traceabilty.

OAL have a 25 year history of supplying turnkey material and processing projects to blue chip UK food manufacturers. Food manufacturers trust OAL to deliver liquid and dry material processing projects up to a value of £5 million where proven experience, design excellence, automation, quality and outstanding support are valued.