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International Meat Automation Conference, Australia

'The future is here': Taking the challenge 

February 9-11 2011, Dockside Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia

                                  

The iMACA conference provided a tremendous opportunity for industry and technical experts from around the world to interact and present the latest in automation research and development. Key highlights of the conference included the following topics:

  • Objective Carcass & Process Measurement and Analysis will be the industry driver of future sustainable improvement in productivity and profitability.
  • Numerous automation projects have now reached the stage of commercial viability.
  • Automation needs to be very cost effective, not more complex than it absolutely needs to be, and to be developed promptly;
  • International competitiveness requires renewed efforts on productivity improvement (at least 2% per annum);
  • The industry has a number of committed experienced equipment & service providers, and industry organisations, to assist processors to make the right investment decisions.

Christine Pitt MLA, opened the conference, and reinforced the ongoing commitment from MLA to the Processing Sector in terms of its product, process development, and adoption activities. Processors are encouraged to participate in the facilitated adoption program. 

Michelle Edge, AMPC, closed the first day, highlighting processors, research providers and technology suppliers all recognise the meat industry as a valuable and rapidly growing sector. With the increasing demand for protein, more automated technology will be required to satisfy demand and ensure that the industry remains efficient, viable and sustainable. AMPC is committed to continuing, in its partnership with MLA, the development of research strategies in this important field and ensuring that the benefits are provided to wider industry.

The conference presentations highlighted that while the Industry has moved forward considerably, there were still many challenges for the industry including: 

  • Further development of modular systems;
  • Combining; duplexing scanning and sensor technologies;
  • Optimising and identifying optimal limits by which to set specifications just to name a few.
  • Also highlighted were the limitations in terms of adoption and uptake as well as accuracy compared with the human element in some boning systems.

Peter Bradbury, ABB, Australia introduced the development of automation in picking, packaging and palletising system and identified the value robotics can provide in areas where people may be less efficient or able to be retained easily.

Jesus Siles, FACCSA, Prolongo, Spain, outlined their approach to optimisation as a basis for underpinning automation systems and described some of the challenges they faced in identifying optimum limits for primal cuts and identifying value.  He also provided insight towards the application of traceability systems for process management and forecasting.

Shane Wittman, Midfield, Australia provided us with a practical example of the Robotic OC system and highlighted how the plant and technology providers managed issues associated with carcass size, gripping and cut accuracy as well as how time, labour and cut accuracy improvement can be realised through the application of these technologies.

Clyde Campbell, MAR, Australia presented how MAR are taking a strategic and systematic approach to technology development and implementation giving an oversight of recent achievements as well as identifying the value where cost/benefit and analysis of techniques to scale technology up or down for each plant is applied.

Sean Starling, Robotic Technologies Limited, Australia presented their vision for a fully automated boning room and the advances made to date.  Sean showed us how modular approaches towards building a full automation system can be advantageous and alternatives for static boning systems.

Tim Sweet, Greenleaf, Australia provided insight to the value of utilising cost/benefit approaches in assessing the value add in automation explaining how yield is one of the strongest value indicators, that measuring and identifying the valuables between management, operation and cobotics at the time of or just prior to introducing new technology can provide valuable information on likely benefit and return post-implementation. 

Richard Aplin, Strategic Engineering, Australia outlined their work on shackling of beef cattle and managing movement of the beast through sensing and robotics.  Provided was an insight into the location vision system utilised for beef hocks and the opportunities in sensing and vision to underpinning  automation.

Brynjolfur Thorsson, Marel, Iceland provided an extensive presentation on the boning hall solutions developed by Marel and explained each component as well as the data capture processes accompanying the technology.  Also described was Marel's latest approaches to trim measurement and bone detection. He demonstrated a hardware & software system which reinforced his company's philosophy: that the most important driver of profit is efficient processing by minimisation of waste or downgraded product, and optimisation of product closely aligned to specification. Yield improvement of 1.5 - 2.5% not uncommon, and throughput improvements of up to 15%. Once again, improvements are driven by process measurement and consequent informed corrective action.

Nigel Wilson, Milmeq (formerly Realcold Milmech), Australia introduced their current research programs, the importance of automation and provided us with examples from several of their R&D case studies.

Patrick Garinger and Dan Sambrooks, Johnsonville, USA.  Patrick provided an overview of the Johnsonville business, its origins and its customers.  Dan presented the technology and automation systems utilised by Johnsonville explaining the advantages and challenges over the last few years for their business.

Koorosh Khodabandehloo (aka KK) demonstrated that with the benefit of 20 years meat industry hindsight that automation, and its' consequent efficiency gains, new technologies are now coming in, if not already now available.  Numerous projects have now reached the stage of commercial viability.  An ongoing challenge is to reduce decision time, with his observation and data analysis that decision making has taken as much time as the development work itself. Also, he made the point that the industry needs to attract the "right people" and get them promptly on the "right jobs".

A number of presentations touched on the importance of objective carcass measurement and considering the whole value chain, including: Henrik Andersen of Carometec relating Iodine Value (a factor which producers can influence) with: shelf life, processability, taste & appearance; and the importance and universal benefits of developing industry standards; and value based pricing & sorting. Improvement is intimately related to firstly measurement, then identifying cause & effect, and finally informed action. Objective carcass measurement was addressed with a number of technologies: X-ray (2D, 2.5D), computer tomography CT scanning (3D X-ray), near infra-red reflectance NIR, ultra-sound, optical reflectivity, computer image analysis,

Axel Hinz of E+V Technology demonstrated that their objective measurement system for beef has now become an industry standard in the US with almost 95% adoption in large scale beef processing.

Commercial equipment vendors all demonstrated their commitment to the Australian industry with their latest product and service offerings: ABB, Freund, Cryovac, ATTEC, DMRI, etc.

David Palmer (MLA) closed the conference by reinforcing his observation that international competitiveness requires renewed efforts on productivity improvement (at least 2% per annum). In a nutshell, and in recommendation for the 2015 conference, "Close the Gap: Lead the Pack".