Twinlode Automation, an integrator of warehouse automation and storage systems, announced it has become an official member of the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW). Twinlode Automation has long held expertise in the movement of time-sensitive food and produce items as they are moved from field to store shelves, and the decision to join the IARW underscores that commitment and better positions the company for being more deeply involved in the industry.
Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe Inc. finds the summer season really good for business—except mostly manual practices in the warehouse put a real crimp on the way the company would really like to handle the distribution side of its supply chain.
Nestlé Suisse SA in Orbe, Switzerland, a facility producing tea in capsules under the well-known brand of Special.T, was in a bind as it looked for a cobotic palletizing solution. Not only was accurate placement of cartons necessary, the robots had to work safely among people.
What does the modern, competitive pet food plant of the future look like? What are its key design considerations to make it fast, efficient and safe (e.g., product flow, building, internal and external environmental considerations, waste streams, automation, equipment, etc.)?
The choice of a control solution collaborator was straightforward for Wonderful Pistachios, which has worked with Rockwell Automation for more than 20 years.
Since 2014, respondents to Food Engineering’s annual State of Food Manufacturing survey have ranked automation as the No. 1 trend affecting the industry—until this year.
In a Tech Update feature headlined “PLCs/PACs: Keys to the IIoT kingdom,” we looked at programmable controllers (PLCs), programmable automation controllers (PACs) and to some extent industrial PCs (IPCs), the latter of which can certainly be applied to most any level of control—e.g., discrete, PID, batch, etc. We considered new functionality in today’s controllers, internal operating systems, I/O capabilities, security and networking—both at the fieldbus/controls level (OT) and IT-side connections.