The Bakery of the Future: Baking Bread More Efficiently with Robots | linrob.io

The Bakery of the Future: Baking Bread More Efficiently with Robots

What if the tasks of several employees could be performed by a single linear robot?

The initial situation

We spoke with a large baker from Germany. He wants to automate several parts of his production and thus make it more efficient. In his production, he makes rolls, pretzel pastries and breads in different production lines. In each of these, the dough pieces arrive by means of a conveyor belt and are placed on a tray. The tray is then placed in the oven and, after baking, stored on a rack to cool. Previously, all these production steps were carried out by employees. This resulted in a lot of idle time and unnecessary costs.

We took a look at the production facility on site. We found that there was little space on the individual production lines and that the processes were not yet optimally coordinated. Thus, the employees always had too much or too little to do, because a few batches of dough always arrived at once, followed by a long pause.

The solution

We solved this problem by installing a light barrier on the conveyor belt, which sends a signal to our linear robot as soon as rolls have arrived. In the meantime, the linrob which is mounted on the wall can transport the loaded trays into the oven and take the fully baked goods out of the oven.

Thus, a single robot takes over the work of three people, who can now be deployed much more efficiently elsewhere.

But how can it be ensured that there are always enough sheets available for the oven when the linear robot is fixed to the wall? This problem is also solved by means of automation. A driverless transport system delivers the empty sheets to the designated position. This allows the linrob to load the sheets with the formed dough pieces without any problems.

Of course, we have also thought about the employees' safety. Our linrob is fitted with radar safety systems so that the fully loaded trolley can simply be picked up by an employee on the fly to remove the finished rolls or loaves. As soon as the linear robot gets too close to an employee, it first slows down its speed and, if they get even closer, comes to a complete stop until the employee has exchanged the trolleys and moved away from the danger zone.

The Loading of the Baked Goods

Now the various baked goods are packed into boxes, ready to be delivered to the appropriate stores. Our wholesale baker also wanted to automate this work step. The boxes arrive on a conveyor belt and are each marked with a QR code. Through the QR code, the linrob palletizer knows to which store the corresponding crate must be delivered. This means it can always approach the correct one of the 10 pallets. As soon as a pallet is filled, an employee replaces it with an empty one and loads the filled pallet onto the corresponding truck.

We have piqued your interest? Please feel free to contact us and we will discuss your project!