Automating your food processing line is a great way to grow your business. As you automate the packaging of your food, you are able to process more orders, likely with the same number of staff you had when your business was much smaller.
Fortunately, with custom packaging solutions, it’s easy to start automating your process with one machine, and then further automate your line as your business grows and your budget allows. Systems that are designed to work either independently or as part of an overall process allow you to grow your business in a way that suits you.
The first step is often automating the actual packaging of the food, including measuring an appropriate portion, filling the container and sealing. This single machine can help companies improve efficiency and increase the number of orders processed all on its own.
Consider a Bucket Elevator
When you’re ready to automate further, it may be time to move a little further back in the overall process. Automating the step just ahead of packaging can be the right way to go. In many cases, adding a bucket elevator to your line will increase efficiency even further.
A bucket elevator is used to transport the food in buckets to the measuring and packaging machine to ensure the hopper stays full so that the packaging machine can run without interruption.
Bucket elevators operate by filling food grade buckets with your product, raising the buckets to a height above the packaging machine and emptying the contents into the packaging machine. This is a simple machine, but it provides another step in keeping your processing line moving. You can fill the buckets manually, or continue to automate further back in your process to have the buckets filled automatically.
Take Away Conveyors Move Your Products into Shipping
Another option for adding to your automated line is to add a take away conveyor to the other end of the process. The take away conveyor moves your newly packaged product up to working height so that the individual containers can be packaged for shipping.
Adding either of these machines to your process will cause your efficiency to increase by leaps and bounds, helping you to get significantly more orders out the door.
For even greater efficiency, add both machines and see your productivity increase exponentially.
When you’re ready to take the next step in automating your process further, talk to an engineer with a food packaging system company. They can offer plenty of advice and assistance to help you put together the perfect solution to fit your product, your process and your budget.
