What Are Food Automation Companies?
Food automation companies are businesses who specialize in solving problems for food service customers with automation and robotics. They can develop solutions for national restaurant chains and food manufacturers ranging from the simplest fixes to fully robotic systems.
Food Automation Companies Can Help When There Is Pressure to Improve Operations
Labor shortages, trouble keeping up with demand, or poor product quality are all signs that it may be time to automate. Properly staffing a restaurant or food manufacturing plant is as difficult as ever. The cost of employees has gone up and hiring and retaining employees can feel all but impossible. Food automation companies can help to implement systems which will reduce the amount of labor required to perform the same task.
If there is plenty of customer demand but the business simply cannot keep up, food automation companies can help. Consider your kitchen or factory’s current bottleneck. Automating this step will increase capacity for your entire business. Improving bottlenecks is a part of lean manufacturing. To learn more about lean manufacturing for restaurants and food manufacturers check out this article.
Automation can help with quality. If too many of your products get rejected at QC or customer complaints are on the rise you may have a quality and consistency issue. Food automation companies can help mechanize operations thereby making a specific task extraordinarily repeatable with very little variation.
Food Automation Companies Can Help When Internal Attempts Have Failed
Automation and Research & Development are worlds unto their own. The mindset for R&D is unique and if not already a part of a business it can be a major cultural change. Even in factories with engineers, often the staff is mostly focused on keeping the system running smoothly, not necessarily on improving it. R&D can be costly, time consuming, and if not well managed result in very little except frustration. If your business is considering automation, we highly recommend consulting with experienced food automation companies before experiencing a project failure.
Food Automation Companies Can Help When Regular Automation Firms Cannot
There are many fantastic automation firms which can potentially help with a business operation. The rub is that most of these firms work in typical manufacturing or fulfilment environments. Food manufacturing is fickle. Restaurants are even more-so. Often, in food manufacturing and restaurants the environment for automation is high temperature, steamy, or greasy. These are all terrible for most automation equipment. Food automations companies already know how to develop systems which can stand up to these challenging environments and meet the strict health safety requirements imposed on them.
Most automation companies are used to working in large factory spaces. Fast paced kitchens will require the same level of automation in a fraction of the footprint. Space constraints can become suffocating if not well managed. Food automation companies will know how consider the very tight spatial requirements of a commercial kitchen.
The implementation of automation into any business environment can be complicated and costly. Without experience it can be misguided and unfruitful. If your business is considering implementing automation for the first time, consider a specialized firm to guide you through the process. If your business is a restaurant or food manufacturer, consider food automation companies to help you on the way.