Background
The industry for decades has been trying to develop aids to assist operators in undertaking boning and slaughter tasks. However, excluding jaw breaking and carcase hang-up mechanisms, they have been unable to successfully tackle some of the demanding jobs such as beef boning tasks.
Previous work conducted by MLA has identified that both knuckle pulling and aitch boning are the most arduous boning room tasks in beef processing.
Figure 1 - Beef boning tasks in decreasing order of arduous impact on operator.
Since MLA funded work in this area, three separate avenues have been pursued, each with differing levels of complexity, automation and cost.
Approach 1 - ‘Hook assist' high end automation (Kinea Design)
MLA has worked with the Australian meat industry in investigating how other industries internationally approach the issues of reducing effort required for people to undertake tasks. The best candidate technology is 'hook assist' technology being developed predominantly in America, mainly for military ground troops and civil rescue services.
MLA engaged identified researchers from North-Western University (Chicago) to undertake a feasibility study and develop a system that although being aimed for application to beef hindquarter boning would be an enabling platform for multiple strenuous processing tasks.
Since contracting, the Chicago researchers have formed a company (Kinea Design) and developed the first laboratory working prototype that during August 2008 was demonstrated and evaluated in Australia by the processing sector.
This ‘hook assist' platform has been developed for beef hindquarter boning, but can also be applied to beef forequarter boning, beef slaughter, small stock boning and slaughter, material handling and other strenuous activates external to the processing environment.
MLA and some industry leaders also believe that this system will provide an opportunity for the industry to investigate alternative ways of processing that are not limited to the traits and limitations of un-assisted operators. As such it may evolve that a second generation of mechanisms are developed specifically to enable boning process redesign to be undertaken.
The technology has a 2-4 year further development process and includes highly sophisticated force feedback and device control technology.
Approach 2 - Enhance existing low end industry systems (Teys/Proman)
In 2003 MLA undertook a project with Tasman Group Services to evaluate the benefit of a standard Proman system in an Australian boning room. The results were impressive with increased yield and efficiency and forecasted decrease of OH&S issues.
Subsequently, John Hughes of Teys Bros Pty Ltd, supported by MLA, developed two systems.
The first was a low cost knuckle puller that is a simple chain and pneumatic cylinder operation, while the second was a cut down and modified version of a standard Proman Carnie Boning Liberator system for aitchbone removal.
These are both now commercially available.
The final approach is automation of selected boning room tasks with a manual assist device (of lesser sophistication than the ‘hook assist' approach) with this being stepping stone to full robotic automation if achievable. To address the beef industry's reluctance to engage in automation, MLA took a selected handful of beef processors to witness first hand and to understand the developments in small stock boning, namely the developments underway with RTL in New Zealand.
Since the visit, RTL has worked with industry to successfully develop a manual assist beef boning system for knuckle and aitch bone removal.
This has now been successfully trialled in multiple plants and is commercially available.