Different food manufacturers have different goals. While some facilities focus on consistency as their primary metric, others are more concerned with throughput rates as a leading indicator of production line efficiency. At companies with a focus on consistency, a throughput of 15 to 20 trays per minute is the typical rate production line employees achieve. For organizations that use throughput as their primary success metric, however, production line workers are expected to churn out 30 or more trays per minute.
Chef has traditionally served consistency-focused customers. These companies care a great deal about ingredients being placed accurately, sometimes with specific aesthetic placement requirements. Assembly speed is still top of mind for these customers, but it takes a backseat to ensure that ingredients are placed neatly in the correct compartment of each tray. The reason Chef has typically worked with these types of food manufacturers is that, until now, AI-enabled robots have struggled to match the throughput rate of workers when maximum assembly speed is the primary focus. In other words, robots are great at placing ingredients accurately, even in small or oddly shaped tray compartments, but until now, they haven’t been able to achieve the maximum speed of a worker.
Chef’s new multi-deposit feature is a game-changer in this regard. It provides the first 1:1 worker equivalent for meal assembly, making AI-enabled robots a compelling solution for a much wider range of customers. Chef robots with the multi-deposit configuration can match throughput rates of 30 trays or more per minute, all while maintaining consistency.
How multi-deposit works
Until now, each Chef robot had the ability to use one utensil, picking and placing one portion of food at a time. With Chef’s new multi-deposit configuration, the robot’s end effector is set up to use up to three utensils simultaneously. This allows the robot to pick an ingredient once and then place it into two or three trays before returning to the hotel pan and picking again. By amortizing the pick and transport time over multiple trays, Chef robots with the multi-deposit feature can achieve 1.5 to 2 times higher throughput rates compared to the traditional single-deposit configuration.
How we built it
To build the multi-deposit feature, we developed specialized software that solves the challenges involved with using more than one utensil. Most notably, our software accounts for variances across the topography of food levels inside a hotel pan. While a single-deposit robot can simply pick at the pick pose that is most optimal for a single food portion, the multi-pick feature uses a higher level of reasoning to maneuver in a way that ensures equally-sized portions across multiple utensils. We also created an AI model to predict when the next tray on the conveyor will come into view while a robot’s camera view is occluded.
What’s next?
Our multi-deposit feature expands the capabilities of Chef robots to better serve throughput-focused food manufacturers, providing a 1:1 worker equivalent. Consistency-focused food manufacturers might still find our traditional single-deposit configuration best suited for their needs. Some of Chef’s customers have already been using the multi-pick feature on their production lines for fresh prepared meals and have assembled over 14 million multi-deposit servings to date. The feature is now widely available to food manufacturers who want to automate meal assembly with a focus on high throughput while maintaining consistency.
Interested in learning more about Chef’s capabilities? Contact us to discover the full range of features that Chef customers like Amy’s Kitchen, Avatar Foods, Chef Bombay, Sunbasket, and Cafe Spice are using.
