Meat+Poultry - October 2022 - 23

plants is proving beneficial in predicting and
forecasting maintenance issues and identifying
opportunities for operational improvements.
MAKING THE LEAP
The industry's biggest processors have done
more than just dabble in innovations that
were recently thought to be technology pipe
dreams and most have committed resources
to continue developing even more futuristic
solutions for the next generation of meat
and poultry processing plants. A focus on
automation is a common theme among them.
For example, within the past decade
São Paulo, Brazil-based JBS S.A. embarked
on learning more about how it could apply
machine learning at its 300-plus processing
facilities. In 2015, JBS made a multi-milliondollar
investment to own a controlling share
of New Zealand-based Scott Technology. This
year, JBS Foods Canada announced it was
investing $71 million in a project with Scott
Technology to make its Brooks, Alberta,
warehouse fully automated.
" This new system will help reduce storage
costs and errors and deliver improved
inventory turns, while also improving worker
safety as one box can weigh up to 110 lbs, "
said John Kippenberger, chief executive officer
of Scott Technology, when the project was
announced in July. " It represents significant
efficiencies and cost savings for JBS Foods
Canada and will be the largest project of its
kind for Scott to date. "
Late this past year, during a presentation
at an investor meeting, Hormel Foods Corp.'s
group vice president of supply chain, Mark
Coffey, said the company routinely earmarks
millions for automation in each year's budget.
" With the uncertainty of labor and this
tight labor supply, we are ramping up our
investments in automation, " he said.
Earlier this year, Springdale, Ark.-based
Tyson Foods Inc. announced it had 12 new
plants under construction in the United States,
with automation playing a critical role in all of
them. At the beginning of its 2022 fiscal year,
the company said it budgeted approximately
$1.9 billion to invest in additional capacity
and automation.
One of those projects is Tyson's
bacon processing plant, a $355 million,
400,000-square-foot project underway in
Bowling Green, Ky. Gregg Uecker, Tyson's
senior vice president of operations of
Prepared Foods is leading the project in
terms of construction, design and equipment.
And automation is a big part of the plant's
operation, which is scheduled to start up in
late 2023. He said projects of this scale have to
be built with a future-first mindset.
" We aren't designing the plant for today
and today's processes and today's problems, "
he said. " We're designing a plant so that 15
and 20 years from now it is still viable and still
highly competitive.
" So, you have to think way differently.
Where's the world going to be? How do I not
plan myself into a corner? How can I think
about looking at technology? " he said, adding
that there is a balancing act between building
for the future and ensuring reliability when it
comes time to execute production. " When it
comes time to press the green button and start
the plant, it's got to make bacon, " he said.
He said the bacon plant is an example of
how new plants address today's issues while
accounting for what might be tomorrow, which
depends on the future-minded approach of the
project leaders. Automation is an important
part of the future, but so is an operations
strategy, which is data based.
" We need to look at staffing and availability
of labor, the cost of labor, but also making jobs
easier, more precise and really allowing control
systems to run them versus people running
processes, " Uecker said. " Automation is a way
of life. It's not a project anymore. It's kind of
like it's just part of how we work.
" And I think about data the same way. We
have to collect more data from the processes.
We have to get more insight from these
processes with more sensors and more controls
on anything that we do today than we ever did
five years ago, 10 years ago, and now we have to
make better decisions to reduce variability and
increase the speed of business with that data. "
POULTRY FOCUSED
Konrad Ahlin, PhD, Georgia Tech Research
Institute, Aerospace, Transportation &
Advanced Systems Laboratory, believes the
time for widescale utilization of automation
and robotics in the poultry industry is now.
And he said once a foothold is established, the
future is bright.
www.meatpoultry.com | 10.22 | MEAT+POULTRY
23
Automation is
a way of life.
It's not a project
anymore. It's
kind of like it's
just part of how
we work. "
- GREGG UECKER
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - October 2022

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