CLIENT & CHALLENGE
Even Cheese Cuts, Damage Free Handling, and Repeatable Weight Control
A family owned cheese producer and processor in the Netherlands, like many food manufacturers, was facing two growing pressures: stricter hygiene requirements and intensifying market competition. To raise sanitation standards and double production capacity, the company implemented food processing automation. Two food grade automated machines now handle cheese cutting and packaging, delivering an efficient, consistent workflow with minimal waste.
Our approach
To meet strict hygiene standards, our automation concept was built around one core requirement: only essential personnel should ever have direct contact with the cheese. We designed the line to minimize manual handling and keep product exposure tightly controlled throughout cutting and packing.
The customer produces two cheese types, hard and semi hard. Operators simply select one of two preset programs based on the cheese type, then load the product onto the infeed conveyor. The conveyor transfers the cheese into the machine, where an integrated scanning system measures length and width and automatically calculates the optimal number of slices.
Next, the automated cutting unit slices the cheese to the preset thickness. Slice thickness directly determines cheese stic portion weight, so the system uses closed loop control to keep weights consistent. A checkweigher continuously sends feedback to the cutter, prompting slightly thicker or thinner slices as needed to minimize weight variation and reduce giveaway.
Traditional mechanical grippers can damage cheese and create a risk of product slipping or dropping. To address this, our packaging cell uses a robotic arm with a vacuum based handling tool designed for gentle, stable pickup. Once sliced, the cheese travels by conveyor to the packaging station, where the robot picks the finished pieces and loads them into trays for packing, ensuring clean handling, reliable placement, and consistent presentation.
AOI
Component Staking
The Results
After commissioning, the customer achieved a cleaner, more controlled cheese cutting and packaging flow with far less manual handling. Automated scanning and weight feedback stabilized portioning, while robotic vacuum handling reduced damage and product loss. As a result, the line delivered higher output with lower cost and less raw material waste.
From a performance standpoint, the customer saw improvement in three measurable areas:
Doubled hourly throughput
Production increased from 5,000 pieces per hour to 10,000 pieces per hour with consistent operation.
Lower giveaway and less waste
Checkweigher feedback fine tuned slice thickness to minimize weight variation, reducing overfill and raw material loss.
More reliable handling and packaging
Vacuum based robotic pickup reduced breakage and drop risk, improving pack consistency and reducing rework.
Throughout the process, no one touched the cheese except the machines. This significantly improved hygiene standards while lowering production costs and increasing production efficiency.
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- Automation Specialist
- Hunter
Robotlyne is a leading manufacturer of automated equipment and a developer of proprietary industrial software. We engineer and build high-performance solutions designed to synchronize your entire production ecosystem. With 20+ years of expertise in hardware manufacturing and software development, we deliver data-driven smart factory strategies that drive measurable efficiency and long-term ROI.
