In food produce environments and packhouses, the benefits of automation when it comes to workforce health and safety are uncontended. From eliminating arduous and repetitive tasks to working uninterrupted within inhospitable chilled settings, robots are most certainly the future.
Case loading specialist Brillopak and industrial automation pioneer Omron explore how smart robots, hardware and software can be deployed to work collaboratively, safely and productively alongside human counterparts.
The picture frequently painted with Industry 4.0 is a lights out factory – a completely automated smart factory, requiring no human intervention. Yet, that is not so much a journey forward as a complete step change and for many it does not represent a practical implementation of Industry 4.0 at all.
Operators and maintenance staff are going to be key elements of any Industry 4.0 smart factory installation well into the future and that in turn means that safety continues to be a vital consideration.
For packing operations commencing their Industry 4.0 journey, the issue is not so much one of removing people from the plant floor as implementing systems where people work in harmony and safely with the processes.
