Platform for the food and beverage industry
With the development of the mobile robot, Van Wees Waalwijk took a new step in the world of robotics. The robot takes over heavy and monotonous work from people, increases food safety, reduces food waste and makes companies less dependent on labour shortages. Thus, the company contributes to the further development of the food sector. But... "There is still a long way to go to raise this sector to a higher level in terms of automation," says director-owner Andries van der Werf.
In Van Wees Waalwijk's workshop are impressive setups of automation systems. The machine building company custom builds them in all shapes and sizes for companies in various sectors, and no machine leaves the door before it has been extensively tested. From a cigar drilling machine and a lid mounting machine to the flan ejection robot and even a candy chain machine.
As far as the food industry is concerned, the advent of the cobot (the collaborative robot, a robot that works with humans) is an important development. Series sizes are becoming smaller and production runs shorter, making the reduction of changeover times increasingly relevant. "Because of production efficiency, long production runs used to be run," said Van der Werf. "Now a different series is produced every 20 minutes and the importance of being able to changeover quickly increases."
However, Van Wees Waalwijk did not just focus on 'cobots', but directly developed a mobile robot and thus took a new step in the robotics world itself. Van der Werf: "Many operations eligible for automation take place in different places in a company. This gave us the idea: don't bring the work to the robot, but the robot to the work. So a mobile robot. Multi-deployable, easy to program, space-saving and safe. And because the robot is of the cobot type, a separate safety cage is not necessary."
In doing so, the mobile robot serves several purposes. In the first place, it takes over heavy and monotonous work, which relieves the employees and thus prevents absenteeism. In addition, the mobile robot increases food safety, reduces food waste and lowers the dependency of companies due to tight labor markets.
Through the networks of FoodTech Brainport and AgriFood Capital, interest has now been sparked among meal processors and several bakeries, among others. These include Mariën Meesterbakkers in Belgium. "For this large bakery, we developed a 2.0 version of the mobile robot. With a larger industrial robot in a cage, but still mobile," says Van der Werf. "It is now operating at four locations in the bakery. We are now investigating the possibilities of integrating the mobile robot at even more locations."
For supporting funding, AgriFood Capital helped apply for funds from S3FOOD and its follow-up from HIGHFIVE. These are European initiatives by various cluster organizations - including AgriFood Capital - that guide food makers in digitizing production processes. Through these parties, Van der Werf hopes to bring medium-sized players in the agrifood sector in particular into contact with automation and robotization. "Large parties know how to find their way, smaller companies with artisanal production processes often do not. And even there, heavy monotonous work is done." He continues: "And we all know that the labor market is tight. So entrepreneurs in the agrifood sector: take good care of your employees and improve their working conditions by leaving monotonous and heavy work to a mobile robot. This way, they can occupy themselves with the more fun and interesting preparatory work, while the mobile robot takes care of the executive work. Also, with the mobile robot, companies can scale up production faster, serve more customers and offer even more diversity. That can only benefit the food sector. So there is still a long way to go."
