It really gives us an advantage to be able to use some of the advanced technologies, try those out in the environment without having to take it to the plant." "We can bring product in here as we need to process it. "Really one of the keys for us being successful at doing automation is being able to fully test, fully vet the automation in the environment, and the type of conditions that we're going to subject it to,” said Linn, who previously worked as principal engineer of robotics at General Motors.
But I'd say the whole vision side of things is really where a lot of our focus has got to be going forward," Foreman said.įoreman and Linn then walk to another room in the facility, which simulates a food production environment where the temperature can drop to 35 to 40 degrees.
Maybe 10 years ago, it would just be way too expensive, the technology wouldn't have been developed enough. "Cost obviously has come down significantly over the last number of years there starts to become a point where it starts to make sense. That type of robotic camera could help detect defects on their products, like a different coloration that shouldn’t be there, he said. In under 30 seconds, a robotic crane with a camera is able to separate those beads by color into different cups.įoreman, who has been with Tyson for 20 years, said that the compact demonstration shows what they are trying to integrate into their processes, where cameras not only see shapes but also color. Encased in a glass box are red, yellow and green beads scattered all over. In one of Tyson’s innovation labs is a demonstration of a robot that uses a camera to sort different beads by color. Food Dive took tours, interviewed companies and spoke to experts about where these meat companies stand in that process and what a more robotic meat plant future could look like in the U.S.
But yes, like everybody else, the pandemic kind of opened up everybody's eyes,” Linn said.ĭespite the challenges, Tyson, Smithfield, Cargill and JBS are all looking into ways to incorporate more automation as they modernize their plants. "The sense of urgency is higher… I think it's been known for some time that Tyson needed to have a way to enter into doing more and more automation, specifically robotic automation. The pandemic has increased the pressure on Tyson's automation team, its top engineers said. But as the coronavirus ravaged meat plants, forcing many to temporarily shutter as thousands of workers got sick, more companies accelerated their plans for automation. That’s been hugely successful for us to help reduce markdowns and raise on the resale of goods.Automating meat factories has long been a difficult feat because it is costly and carcasses come in varying sizes so it can be hard for robots to cut and work with all types accurately. “We’re doing a level of editing on the returns to kind of filter out items that may be unsellable, and then we have a reprocess prompt to get those items back and sell them as soon as possible. Today, “returns are coming in, they’re being re-commerced immediately,” Friez said. Friez said the span between an item being returned and restocked went from a multi-week process to a multi-day process. “So on top of the growing e-commerce business, the growth of returns, we really outgrew the systems that we had in the distribution center.”Īmerican Eagle, working with Optoro, which sponsored the NRF session with Friez, worked to speed up the time between a return initiated by the customer and a product moving back into stock for a resale, as well as to understand why customers were making returns in the first place. “Our distribution centers weren’t really equipped to deal with massive volumes of returns coming,” Friez said at another panel during NRF’s virtual conference.
distribution centers soon were deluged with multiple weeks’ worth of backlogged returns that normally would have entered the supply chain through the company’s stores, according to Brandon Friez, vice president of supply chain transformation at American Eagle. Retailers that, amid the temporary closures, pivoted to being digital-first businesses also had to quickly adapt to the volume of returns coming in.Īt American Eagle Outfitters, that not only meant a larger volume of returns, but those returns were coming in from different points than in the past.Īfter the retailer closed its stores in March 2020 and pivoted to online sales, American Eagle’s two U.S. The NRF has estimated that consumers returned $428 billion worth of merchandise in 2020, or about 10.6% of all retail sales that year. More online shopping than ever before meant more returns. Reverse logistics came to the fore last year as well. ‘Real pressure on supply chains’: How major players are balancing costs, speed and a new retail world ‘Massive volumes of returns’