Meat Processor Automates on a Budget

“I think the reality is that all of us want to get into automation, but there are a lot of barriers in our head,” says Joel Onyshuk, VP of sales for Formic. “’Is it the right time? Do we have the right people? Do we have the capital to go do it?’—and that’s a big one.”

Onyshuk says that companies have a hard choice to make when it comes to large expenditures that can go toward machinery like palletizers that take time to pay for themselves or put those funds toward business growth opportunities. “I think that’s the thing we want to highlight with Land O’Frost,” he adds. “You can actually automate now versus later because all the constraints that are typically associated with automation, [such as] traditional capital purchase expenses, are now gone, and we can get into actually delivering on the outcomes that we need in our businesses.”

Once Land O’Frost contacted Formic and requested an assessment, the RaaS company worked with the meat processor to find out what the needs were, what the current process was like, and identify possible solutions. Information such as products per case, cases per minute, case weight, stack height, and even otherA total of five palletizers were added at the Lansing facility. Land O'Frost saw greater savings after adding more machines.Image courtesy of Formic information that took a little bit of digging to find was collected. Images of the space were even taken to help figure out what equipment would be the best fit. A complete technical project plan with schematics and performance expectations was provided, as well as the fixed monthly rate based on the length of the partnership. Formic says it can even provide an augmented reality demo so clients can see what it looks like in a facility.

The Land O’Frost team was trained to use the robots installed at the Lansing facility in order to learn the correct operating procedures. Should they need any assistance, Formic offers 24/7 monitoring and bilingual maintenance support.

Impact on staff

In Land O’ Frost’s case, the company added five palletizers to increase productivity, improve ergonomics, and accelerate changeovers. Williams says that Land O’Frost didn’t do much to get employee buy-in on the automation because it didn’t have to. The messaging the company uses when it brings in automation incorporates the idea that staff will be retained, and that automation simply means reallocating where they’ll be working in the facility.

“We don’t have any employees that were here that aren’t here any longer [because of automation],” says Land O'Frost's Willams. “It’s always about making their [the staff’s] job easier.”

While the concern with automation is eliminating jobs, renting equipment has solved a problem for Land O’Frost that has also impacted many manufacturers since covid: having a qualified maintenance staff. Part of the problem has been that maintenance has been changing from needing mechanical expertise to robotics expertise. The agreement with formic has solved a few of Land O’Frost’s challenges in that regard.”

Automating packaging and palletizing operations can have a large impact on improving output.Image courtesy of Formic“Chicago is not too far of a drive, so it was a challenge to keep maintenance techs in the facility,” says Williams. “The partnership with Formic, when you run the numbers, was an ideal process for us because with that partnership, we don’t have to keep a lot of parts onsite. If the machine happens to go down—which rarely happens—we get support from the maintenance techs in that regard. It’s been a really good partnership, and we’ve been able to reduce the amount of open positions and solved our maintenance challenges in the facility.”

Renting the palletizers has offered advantages for Land O’Frost in a number of ways. “This is one of those positions where we were hand palletizing every case,” says Frank Mejia, Industrial Engineer with Land O’Frost, “and there’s no value to that. So, it’s one of those very, very low-hanging fruit that we can address with no capital—it’s almost like a no-brainer. You add to that the labor savings, that’s just basically like the cherry on top.”