The driving forces for automation adoption in any production/ manufacturing environment are constantly changing, but the metric is usually bottom-line cost. When it comes to deboning, the drivers have been moving steadily in favor of technology adoption.
Here’s why: The scarcity of labor is increasing; the costs of personnel on-boarding are rising; and health-care and wellness costs continue to go up. At the same time, the accuracy and reliability of technology are steadily improving. Yield has been a significant hurdle, with manual operations historically outperforming automated systems. New intelligent systems, however, (see primary article on Intelligent Cutting 2.0) will eventually invert this trend, with automated solutions soon surpassing manual yield performance. The question will then become one of cost. Consider this scenario: