Whilst poultry birds seem to be getting larger and larger, consumers still prefer smaller-sized products for consumption. Marel's breast meat distribution system combines tech and real-time process data to determine the best use of each individual fillet.
Whilst big fillets in the processing line need to undergo a cutting or trimming process, poultry processors, in their turn, want to increase production volumes with maximum utilization and least giveaway, while matching customer orders.
Combining these requirements, Marel, which is exhibiting at foodpro 2023, has developed a data-driven solution to distribute each fillet to its best destination, resulting in the highest value.
Using SensorX, RoboBatcher, SmartSplitter, IRIS FI visual inspection and intelligent software, Marel’s system collects volume, weight, and quality data for each fillet. Based on the data and customer orders, the system assigns each fillet to the best destination, either to be portioned or packed as a whole fillet. The Fillet Distributor, consisting of superfast, vertically opening and closing SystemFlex conveyors, directs the fillet to the appropriate route.
Usually, traceability is lost once products come out of the overhead conveyor shackles. The harvested products lie randomly on a conveyor belt and individual product data, gathered earlier in the process and linked to the shackle, is no longer known.
To maintain traceability, product detectors are used to determine the exact position of each breast fillet on the conveyor belt. Information about weight and quality stays with the product too all the time. The software connects the data of the available products on the belt to the customer orders of that moment. It calculates the optimal distribution of products to their best destinations, resulting in the least giveaway and the highest value.
The instructions are sent to the Fillet Distributor, which opens or closes the belt accordingly. The position of the fillet on the new conveyor belt is controlled and recalibrated by product detectors again. This way, the downstream cutting or packing operation is under complete control, and traceability is maintained.
Marel's breast meat distribution system is a big step towards fully automated production control, decreasing human interference to a minimum, and enabling high responsiveness to sudden changes in the production process, such as last-minute orders, flock changes or line stops.
Marel will be exhibiting at foodpro at stand S29.
