U-shaped conveyor and robotic solution for pizza line
The challenge
Our customer was expanding and needed to automate his pizza production to support his growth. He installed an entire pizza makeup line from Italy. But once the pizza bottoms are baked, the topping needed to be added and since his products are of the highest organic quality and not the traditional round shape pizza bottoms, it was hard for the customer to find ways to automate the topping process and to handle it within the limited space he had available.
The Solution
Pinecone Automation designed and built a dual stainless steel U-shaped conveying system with intralox belting for easy cleaning. The belt turned 90 degrees to optimize the available floor space and we added tray holders between the conveyor lanes for ingredients to be stored, so the staff can stand comfortably beside both sides of the conveyors and place the toppings while the pizzas pass by.
In a second step Pinecone Automation integrated a robotic solution for automated applying of the 2 different pizza sauces. After detection of the pizza bottoms, the robot can automatically identify the shapes and position of the pizza bottoms for clean and weight accurate spreading of the sauces.
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The Result
This new production line increased our customers throughput by more than 50% compared to his former, manual working process over tables. In the past, each person was finishing a full pizza at a time, while this new line gives them flow and constant production speed. In addition working is much easier for the staff now, as they do not have to do as many turns and twists as they used to do with the old method.
