The Lincolnshire Drizzle Company produce a range of dressings, marinades, and pestos from a small manufacturing facility in Grantham in the UK. All products use locally produced extra virgin cold pressed rapeseed oil to maximise the health benefits of Omega oils 3,6, & 9 and plant sterols, and provide a rich source of vitamin E, an antioxidant that contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress.
The core outlets for the products are through farm shops, garden centres, the Lincolnshire Co-operative stores, and a small amount of direct online sales.
All sales channels are growing and the business is looking to ramp up production from the current ‘large kitchen scale’ to small scale industrial production. The Lincolnshire Drizzle Company currently has 1 fulltime operative covering all aspects of the business: purchasing, production, marketing, sales, and distribution.

It was clear from the outset that a step change immediately to a cobotic / robotic automation manufacturing solution would not be suitable for this 1-man SME at this point in time. There were restricted technical automation skills within the business, capital investment funding was limited, and beneficial gains could be achieved with simpler, lower cost interventions as initial phases of a staged automation roadmap.
An initial assessment of the production operations was carried out to identify bottlenecks, effort intensive operations, and process flow issues where automation would provide business benefit. Based on these findings a series of options were produced, along with associated projected cost-benefit. These proposals were discussed and honed with the business and a priority sequence agreed. This formed the basis for the sequenced automation roadmap and is briefly described below. The baseline process flow is shown in Figure 3. The operations taking the most time over an entire batch are weighing and mixing (30%), filling (24%) and BBE labelling (13%).
To address the largest of these, working with larger sub-batches spreads the weighing and blending time over more bottles. The precise amount of improvement varies with batch and sub-batch sizing, but an outline model for a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch moving from a 3.5L to 5L sub-batch would reduce process to 221s per bottle (31% improvement). The effects for different batch and sub-batch sizes can be experimented with in the simple spreadsheet model developed as part of the business support.
Small gains can be made at little capital cost by modifying the process layout to effectively bring operations closer together to reduce non-value adding transfer times. These are:

• Smooth the process flow to capper by filling bottles at the pick-up location for the capping operation (Figure 4). This avoids the transfer from filling area to capper and reduces process time by 3% for a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch.
• Move the labelling operation into the production space (Figure 5). This avoids the transfer from capper output to outer room and reduces process time by 4% for a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch.
• Transfer each bottle directly from output of one process to input of next (Figure 5). This avoids the double handling times in putting bottles down and then picking them up again and reduces process time by 7% for a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch. However, the operator would need to move with every bottle through the processes.

At higher capital cost, equipment to address the bottle necks at filling and BBE labelling can be brought in.

• Incorporating a benchtop depositor (Figure 6) is projected to reduce mean filling time per bottle from 19s to 4s, resulting in an overall reduction in process time by 19% for a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch. Estimated costs £6k-8k, including compressor to drive the depositor. An agitator in the supply hopper is required because of the propensity of the product to naturally separate.
• Purchasing a handheld printer to print BBE dates directly onto the label is projected to reduce mean BBE labelling time per bottle from 10s to 3s, resulting in an overall reduction in process time by 9% for a 50 bottle
• (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch. Estimated costs £800-£1,000.

As business grows there is a key decision to be made on how to increase production time available; this could be achieved by employing staff or investment in co/robotics to perform the manual handling of bottles between processes on the existing equipment. Using the cobot would free up staff time from the tedious repetitive bottle transfers, whilst avoiding the costs and complexities of employing a first staff member. A cell layout for this latter option is given in Figure 7.

Blending can remain manual (although mechanisation would aid adoption of the beneficial increases in sub-batch sizes). Empty bottles would be collected and delivered under the fill nozzle of the depositor. Ideally, they would be collected directly from the packaging in which they are supplied to the business as this would require no preparation except moving the bottles in supplied packaging into place. Alternatively, the bottle would be placed in a gravity feed dispenser, or into known locations in a crate from which the robot could collect – thus avoiding need for sensing of the bottle position before grasping.
The depositor fill would be triggered from robot I/O rather than the previous footswitch. End of fill signal would be fed to the controller from the depositor piston returned sensor signal. The robot would collect a cap while filling is taking place.
Presentation of caps for picking will pose some challenges as these are supplied loose and will be in random orientations and positions. A vibratory feeder should be able to orient the caps for pick up, but trials would be required to confirm this. A bin-picking algorithm to pick individual caps from a loose pile could be used, but this would be a substantially more complex and costly approach. The collected cap would be placed on top of the bottle in the known location at the depositor, and the bottle then transferred to the ROPP capper machine.
At the capper, the signal to rotate the capping head would be sent by the robot controller, and the robot used to insert the bottle/cap up into the head (rather than the current lever operated platform).
The capped bottle would then be placed into the side-labeller, where operation is triggered as in manual use, by the presence of the bottle. The final action of the robot would be to transfer the capped and side-labelled bottle to an output location, where a human would inspect and apply BBE and cap labels.
It is estimated that the robotic cell option would reduce production time by 23% compared with the baseline manual process with a 50 bottle (12.5L) batch with 3.5L sub-batch. In addition, the system would operate autonomously and an operator would not be required through all processes. Estimated costs £25k – 35k.