CLIENT & CHALLENGE
Improved Food Safety and Packaging Efficiency
Food safety has always been a major challenge in the food industry. In recent years, outbreaks such as seasonal influenza, COVID 19, and Nipah virus have further increased public awareness and expectations around hygiene. A fully automated food packaging system significantly reduces opportunities for direct human contact with food, helping block common contamination pathways. At the same time, it delivers high throughput packaging with consistent quality, while easing labor shortages and lowering overall packaging costs.
For this project, we partnered with a U.S. sandwich manufacturer to automate hygienic handling and packaging while maintaining product presentation. In addition to hygiene and throughput, the customer emphasized one critical requirement: the sandwiches could not be crushed or dropped during packaging. In food retail, taste matters, but appearance sells, and damaged sandwiches were not acceptable. The challenge is that sandwich thickness naturally varies from unit to unit. If the gripper or fixture is set to a fixed pickup width, it cannot reliably handle every sandwich without either squeezing thicker ones or failing to secure thinner ones.
Our approach
Packaging with a Robotic Arm Featuring Controlled Grip Force
After in depth discussions with the customer and an on site assessment, we developed a targeted packaging plan based on their product details, line layout, and handling constraints.
We leveraged our prior experience from a cheese cutting and packaging project, using that automation model as a foundation and then adapting and optimizing it for sandwiches.
Throughout the packaging process, we minimized manual handling and tightly controlled product exposure to reduce contamination risk. To prevent deformation and slippage, we implemented a robotic arm with adjustable gripping force. As each sandwich arrives at the packaging station on the conveyor, the robot gently picks it up, rotates it 180 degrees, and places it into a dedicated paper bag.
The packaging station is designed to process 20 to 30 sandwiches per minute, with built in room for future expansion. If higher capacity is needed, an additional robotic arm can be added, and with parameter tuning, the line can be scaled to 50 to 60 sandwiches per minute to handle sudden demand spikes.
The Results
Because the system uses a food grade stainless steel rotating end effector and a gear train designed for lifetime lubrication, maintenance requirements are minimal. The station delivers stable, repeatable throughput over long production runs. By reducing labor needs and minimizing material loss through improved packaging quality, the project achieved payback in roughly 12 months.
Throughout the project communication and deployment, Robotlyne demonstrated an exceptional level of professionalism. The robotic arm’s speed and precision remain outstanding, and we’re looking forward to the next production upgrade.
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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.
