Case study example
Twenty hand positions across two shifts, one line, a 13-month projected payback. A charcuterie producer was placing four products into large trays by hand and hand-packing the cases. This is what the roadmap found, the solution, and the numbers behind it.
Customer anonymized. Figures are projected from the system's ROI model.
The situation
The line packs large charcuterie trays with four products: two styles of sliced deli product straight off an existing slicer, plus candies and other small loose pieces. Every placement was by hand. At the end of the line, sealed and labeled trays were hand-loaded into cases. Sixteen people on loading and four on case packing, across two shifts, and the positions were hard to keep staffed. Label accuracy relied on someone looking.
The plant knew it wanted to automate. It did not have the engineering time to work out which parts of the line could be automated, in what order, and whether the whole thing would pay back.
What the roadmap found
The first pass looked at a semi-automated hand-pack station for the end of line. The second pass looked at the whole line and found the larger number on the loading side: sixteen of the twenty positions were placing product into trays. Automating loading without case packing would have left a manual bottleneck at the end of a fast line, so the solution took both.
Two things made loading automatable. The slicer already discharges shingled stacks in a consistent form that a vision-guided robot can pick. And the loose pieces are free-flowing enough for count-based rotary filling, which also tightens portion control compared with a handful.
The third finding was quality, not labor: with hand-packing gone, a mislabeled tray would have gone straight into a case. The solution added inline label verification with reject ahead of the case packer, so a wrong label never has to be unpacked.
The solution
Picks shingled stacks of sliced deli product directly off the slicer discharge and places them into tray compartments with presentation preserved. Hygienic stainless frame, washdown rated.
One head per loose product, metered by count into its compartment. Better portion control than hand placement.
The plant's current equipment stays in place. Nothing to buy here.
Confirms the right label on every tray and kicks non-conforming trays out before case packing. Replaces the visual check.
Cases are erected and bottom-taped, trays are collated and placed one layer at a time by two delta robots, and the case is top-taped on the way out. Tool-less changeover under five minutes.
Palletizing stays manual in this system. It is the obvious next project once the line is running.
Delivery
Next Tech delivers the system as the general contractor. One contract covers all three equipment suppliers: the engineering and layout, product testing and firm quotes, factory acceptance at each vendor, shipping and rigging, installation, commissioning, and startup at rate on the floor. The customer deals with one team, one schedule and one accountable party.
See it run
Robotic loading, tray sealing, inspection and robotic case packing, animated at rate. The builder draws the technologies, not the exact machines, and does not yet include the rotary filler or label verification.
Your plant
The roadmap walks the whole plant and builds a case like this one for every opportunity worth doing, ranked by payback. No fee, no obligation.