News & Knowledge

We’re your source for automation news. Keep up with the latest industry updates and E Tech employee spotlights, as well as tips and guidance from our manufacturing experts.

| June 13, 2023

Building an Automation Infrastructure

E Tech Group Director of Operations, Cassy Gardner, is featured as a part of the following article, which originally appeared in Food Engineering Magazine. The better you know what you already have in place, the easier it is to plan for a successful future. Unless you operate a brand-new state-of-the-art plant, you probably have a facility with a mish-mash of aging processing and packaging equipment with various vintages of network and application software support—maybe several areas still requiring manual labor. As technology continues to move forward, piecemeal, aging automation systems reach a bottleneck, hampering further growth and competitiveness for the company. For older facilities, knowing where and what to automate—what your priorities should be—is important to helping you stay competitive now and in the future. For those with new plants, it’s never too late to plan your future goals – today’s turnkey automated factory is tomorrow’s control system retrofit. In this article, we consider how to know when, where and what to automate in an older facility. Of course, the answers to these questions won’t be the same for every plant, but we can see a framework essential to all automation projects come through regardless. Automation Solving Labor Shortage Problems The primary motivations driving food processors to automate their operations include labor reduction, increased production efficiency and enhanced product quality, says Ryan Beesley, CAP, Regional Engineering Manager at Kennewick, Concept Systems, Inc., a Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) Certified Member. But the labor aspect has especially been an acute problem for the last couple of years as manufacturers realize the labor shortage is not a short-term problem. Other Advantages of Process Automation Getting Started in the Planning Process No two automation solutions will be the same—each one is unique. “Custom automation solutions typically begin with a feasibility and concept phase … Continued

| June 2, 2023

What are the Current Pain Points with Supporting Utilities Such as Ammonia Refrigeration and Steam Generation?

When you look at supporting industrial utility systems like ammonia refrigeration, you may wonder how often you might actually encounter them. They appear far more in your daily life than you realize. Look at the rooftop of an industrial facility and see if you notice orange pipes or windsocks. It is likely that this facility has an ammonia refrigeration system. Now, when it comes to the maintenance of these systems, there are a few pain points that tend to plague facilities more than others. Aging Systems: These systems are decades old in most cases, many around 20–30 years old, and tend to require human labor occasionally. By comparison, the average industrial boiler system in the United States is around 30-40 years old, and many of these systems require large amounts of human interaction more often. The thing both these systems share is a lower level of automation, utilizing control panels dependent on relays and contactors to implement control schemes. Incorrect Sequencing Causing Inefficiency: Not only primitive automation, but the inability to adapt to changes in demand or load can present a challenging issue. This can often result in incorrect sequencing equipment due to simple control implementations, leading to lower overall system efficiency. A common instance of incorrect sequencing is having the largest piece of equipment either always running or brought online when demand is lower, which can be less efficient in its operation and energy consumption. Keeping in mind these systems can also be slow to start or restart if personnel are not quickly notified when a fault or issue occurs. Lack of Integration into Larger Control Systems: Even if a modern system has been implemented, it is less likely that it is part of a BMS (Building Management System) or DCS (Distributed Control System) which could better control … Continued

| June 1, 2023

Q and A from “Can your vision system do this?” webinar

Laurie Cavanaugh, VP of Business Development from E Tech Group, and Nick Hobbs, Senior Regional Sales Manager from Apera AI, recently held a webinar covering the benefits of integrating Apera AI’s 4D vision system into your automation project. There were some great follow-up questions asked by our attendees and we wanted to make sure we shared the As to your Qs! How long does it take for the AI to go through a million learning cycles? Nick: At this time, once all required information is submitted, you’ll receive your vision program back within a week to two weeks. How many different objects can the system handle at one time? What if they have a mix of different finishes? Nick: So right now, the PC alone can handle learning up to 30 different parts. However, other users that have their own internal network, which I know E Tech Group can help you to set up, have hundreds of parts and it takes a mere 20 seconds to simultaneously learn if they’re not part of those original 30. Now as far as different finishes, I have been working with foundries and casting plants where they have metal billets. We can pick clean or corroded, as they have varying finishes. We don’t care. We really don’t mind picking different colors, things of that nature. However, we’re not looking for color at that point, so you just need to let us know what we need and don’t need to look for. But in that sense, it won’t affect us. Laurie: There are some things too that we take into consideration. We do have our own internal industrial IT group that has helped numerous companies’ IT groups set up the proper OT network. Between the hardware and software, servers, and systems, we can help ensure that those … Continued

Implementing Robotic Automation for a Food Production Client

E Tech Group was able to automate a once completely manual process for a food manufacturing facility that was struggling with employee retention and meeting output demand due to physically demanding and environmental factors.

The Project: Help a Client Circumvent Labor Shortages with Robotics Automation

A food manufacturing facility located in Greenville, SC was experiencing bouts of labor shortages, extremely high turnover and retention, workplace injuries, and impacted output that could all be traced back to the packaging and palletization area in their facility. This physically-demanding manual process was starting to threaten the company’s operations and employee safety.

Before reaching out to E Tech Group, this palletizing process was one-hundred percent manual. There were fourteen full-time employees that were able to pack and palletize enough product to produce 1.5-2 truckloads for shipment per day. Unfortunately, there were a number of contributing factors that were severely limiting the desired output.

The Challenges: Complications Inside & Outside the Facility

Because this facility was located in a warmer climate, temperatures could reach over one-hundred degrees in the hotter months. This, coupled with the facility being dedicated to food and beverage production, the workers on the floor couldn’t have beverages of any kind outside of their allocated breaks throughout the day. This could make it difficult to remain hydrated and contribute to work-related incidents.

There were often too many employees attempting to navigate narrow walkways in increasingly-crowded spaces, adding to the already hot temperatures and exacerbating the possibility of potential injury. In some cases, not just a possibility, but numerous violations and lax regulations allowed sub-par pallets to be handled and used in their palletization and shipping process, leading to 40% of the recordable OSHA incidents coming solely from this area.

On top of all this, it was brought to our attention that the majority of individuals working in this area were contracted by a temp agency and would often only last a week, and on certain occasions, just until lunch. It was clear to our team that all of the aforementioned conditional issues were heavily influencing the incredibly high turnover this facility was experiencing, even before COVID, and continued to only get higher during.

The environmental and physical working conditions were enough to truly drive the need for automation in an area that really wasn’t optimized for human labor. Implementing robotic processes and an integrated control system would allow personnel to deal with palletizing from the safety of an HMI instead of dealing with a taxing, risky and inconsistent physical process.

The Process: Environmental Factors & Available Capital Push for a Creative Solution

Understanding that this facility had a number of issues impacting retention and consistency in their workforce, and the ultimate goal being to automate those positions not suited for human labor, the applied solution would need to be designed taking into consideration the limited resources available to monitor and maintain this installation. This would allow the client to reallocate and retrain existing skilled labor to fill new positions without the need to rely on temp agencies for additional workers.

Second to available manpower, the limited physical space continued to plague the design team. Knowing this already overcrowded space was susceptible to frequent workplace injuries, they would be forced to think outside of the box when positioning the equipment for an automation solution that would be erected in an area not conducive to added equipment.

Not only was accommodating the lack of real estate a large undertaking, but addressing the dated infrastructure quickly moved to the top of the list. Realizing that any installed solution would require new and dedicated power to ensure reliability, it added a slightly complex layer to an already intricate project.

The last and perhaps most critical challenge to address and overcome was stakeholder approval. Understanding this facility had been facing an output deficit impacting their profitability, getting them to spend more money was no easy task. Our team provided several iterations of the proposed solution, but it proved to be an exercise in futility.

The Solution: Strategic Segmentation Provides a Budget-Friendly Design

After all proposed solutions were rejected by the decision makers due to budgetary constraints, our team decided to position a phased approach. This would allow them to spread the large investment required to help realize their business goals across a number of installations. Satisfied with the first and second phase and proposed cost, the E Tech Group team began to execute!

PHASE 1: Planning

Design a comprehensive automation solution that maximized use of space and minimized need for worker traffic.

PHASE 2: Application

Procure the necessary automated equipment, build the robotics control system, program, install, commission, and train employees on the new system.

Major Equipment:

Palletizing cells, safety fence and scanner system
Pallet conveyor
Pallet dispenser
Pallet wrapper
AGV system with stacked dual conveyor cart
Case conveyor
Mezzanine in filler room
Safety gate for existing mezzanine

Electrical Equipment:

PLC control panel
Case conveyor
800A bucket for MCC
480VAC power distribution panels
Case conveyor motor disconnects
Distributed I/O sensors/solenoids/brackets
Pallet conveyor VFD panel
Pallet motor disconnects/brackets
HMI

Once the initial challenge of running dedicated power for this control system installation was complete, these combined and installed components created a fully-automated solution that drops a box from an elevated mezzanine to a fill area below, shakes to level and then moves the full box through a taping station as it heads down a conveyor, where it is then diverted to the correct palletizing area.

A palletizing robot picks and places the sealed box in its designated spot on the pallet, and once full is secured by a pallet wrapper. When the pallet is ready to move to the shipping area, an AGV removes the full pallet, then adds more empty pallets to hopper that will repeat this process.

By automating the client’s palletizing processes in this way, E Tech Group helped them remedy the multivariable dilemma that this manual process caused the company – namely, high turnover, an unsafe environment, and the output limitations symptomatic of the first two.

PHASE 3: Future Work

Add automated case erectors on mezzanine to automatically provide empty cases.

The Results: Tangible Results on an Immediate Scale

The benefits this custom automation system provides this client made the challenges we encountered throughout the project worth it. The roboticized pallet system bore several positive results:

Decreased Safety Incidents and Increased Production

Our E Tech Group team took this from a completely manual process to an automated one. This facility redeployed two-thirds of their twelve full-time employees from this area to other areas in need, helping eliminate overcrowding and decrease the number of safety-related incidents. This left only three employees to monitor this new system which almost doubled the production and output rate; from 1.5-2 to 2.5-3 truckloads per day.

Long-Term ROI Considerations

The implementation of a solution designed to automate a once manual process, replacing 12 manual labor positions, has exponential ROI potential. When positioning this solution, it was critical to understand the facility’s challenges and goals. E Tech Group believes the continued completion of the next phases will only compound the ROI considerations first identified when taking on this project.

Reduction in Accidents/Lost Time Accidents

The new automation system anticipated a reduction of as much as 40% of the OSHA recordable incidents that occur in and around pallet handling. This, in turn, improved their safety record, reducing claim impact and insurance premiums, as well as lost time resulting from work-related incidents.

Reduced Administrative Burden for Labor Acquisition

Automating the palletizing process enabled the management team to increase efficiency, as they would no longer be tasked with perpetual recruiting, onboarding, supervision and scheduling of a constantly-changing labor pool. This allowed these departments to be more effective, adding even more return to the facility.

Ability to Accommodate Future Capacity Increases

These phased upgrades will allow for easier future optimization, increasing throughput and allowing the client to stay competitive.

Risk Mitigation/Predictability

Because the human being represents a fairly uncontrollable variable, susceptible to injury, illness or unpredictability, the transition to automation largely eliminates those risks. The client would now be able to more accurately predict and complete throughput benchmarks; ensuring order consistency and packaging quality.

Competitive Advantage/Enterprise Value

While automation provides an increased level of predictability to the business, it also provides the image of a state-of-the-art industry leader to a prospective customer or buyer that is visiting several potential vendors. Setting yourself apart as a company that continues to invest in their business can be invaluable. In all, this complete manual-to-robotics switch helped the client in several ways. While it was challenging to design and implement a cutting-edge system in an outdated and cramped facility, the benefits outweighed the cost immediately, and will continue to offer the client long-term returns. And E Tech Group will be there to support their automation endeavors every step of the way.

Learn More About E Tech Group’s Material Handling Solutions