Automate and Control LTD

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  • Detection of Missing Products in Boxes

    vision inspection box missing component
    vision inspection full box

    Automatic detection of missing components such as PET bottles and other components packed in secondary packing solutions.

    AI Vision Sensor Systems built by Automate and Control LTD easily eliminate to need for manual inspection of automated production lines. With high speed food and pharma production lines ensuring quality control is essential. Our compact bespoke systems with integral intelligent lighting can easily be implemented in some of the most compact locations to suit your existing production lines.

    vision inspection box with missing pet bottle

  • Sachet Detection in Pots

    vision sensor detecting food sachet
    vision sensor non-detection food sachet

    Automatic detection of missing components such as sachets in multi-component foods.

    Examples of quality control applications

    • Noodle pots with sauce
    • Salads with sachets of dressing
    • Meat with sachets of marinade
    • Meat absorbent pads in trays
    • Spoons in cans of baby food

    AI Vision Sensor Systems built by Automate and Control LTD easily eliminate to need for manual inspection of automated production lines. With high speed food and pharma production lines ensuring quality control is essential. Our compact bespoke systems with integral intelligent lighting can easily be implemented in some of the most compact locations to suit your existing production lines.

    Vision Sensor sachet detection food components

  • How we Protect Against the Cost of Muscle Abnormalities in Broiler Breast Meat – Including Woody Breast and White Striping.

    How we Protect Against the Cost of Muscle Abnormalities in Broiler Breast Meat – Including Woody Breast and White Striping.

    Woody / Wooden Chicken Breast Meat and White Striping is estimated to cost the Poultry Industry between 200-1,000M USD per year.

    With consumers taking to social media to share their experiences, brand protection is more important than ever. Automate and Control LTD have the most advanced solution on the market to ensure your consumers don’t suffer a poor quality experience.

    “Wooden breast” describes quality problems caused by abnormal muscles in a small portion of chicken. This condition makes the chicken breasts hard to the touch, and the colour is usually light and the texture is poor. Wooden breast will not bring any health or food safety hazards to people, and the welfare of the chicken itself will not be negatively affected.

    What causes the “woody breast”?
    Do larger, faster raised chickens cause “woody breasts”?

    The cause of the “woody breast” is not yet clear, and researchers are working to determine the cause and possible solutions. The poultry industry will invest more than a quarter of a million dollars in four independent research projects of independent universities and the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, while also collaborating with geneticists, veterinarians, and animal scientists to gain insight into this kind of muscle disease and remedy it.

    Is “Wooden Brest” a threat to my health? Is this common?

    No, chicken with “woody/wooden breast” will not pose a threat to consumers’ health. The concern about “woody breasts” is the quality (texture and appearance) of the meat, not the health or nutritional content of the meat. All chicken companies check these quality problems in their processing plants. This situation is sporadic and only affects a small part of the poultry.

    How do chicken producers currently deal with “woody-breasted chicken”?

    In addition to strict Food Safety Inspection equipment such as X-rays and metal detectors the chicken companies also have processing plant employees who inspect each piece of breast meat in the factory. And if any quality issues such as “wooden breasts” are found, meat is usually transferred for use elsewhere.

    The issue with manual poultry breast inspection is fatigue of the employee carrying out this process. Early in the shift the accuracy may be in the high 80% dropping off over the day to maybe around the 60% mark. With our Poultry Quality Inspection System QIS-4P you receive 100% inspection with an average of >95% accuracy.

    Using Online, High Speed, CHEMICAL COLOUR ANALYSIS, not only does our system inspect for Woody Breast it can also inspect for other contaminants not wanted in a ready to cook ready or fast food product, such as small fragments of bone, fat, skin, blood spots all that may impair the final product when consumed by your customers.

    Severe woody breast automatic inspection

    QIS-4P meat and poultry inspection systems from Automate and Control LTD


    Wooden Breast Poultry Inspection System

    For more information on Muscle Abnormalities in Broiler Breast Meat visit.

    https://www.kosfaj.org/archive/view_article?pid=kosfa-38-5-835

    For more information on automated poultry inspection systems, contact

    Automate and Control LTD – sales@automateandcontrol.co.uk

  • COVID-19 Hitting Reset on the Fast Food and Ready to Eat Sector of the Poultry Industry

    COVID-19 Hitting Reset on the Fast Food and Ready to Eat Sector of the Poultry Industry

    Labour reducing automation has always been one of the main ROI’s for implementation, until now! Our customers have been faced with the fact their food production plants could come to an immediate halt threatening their very livelihoods by a minuscule virus, that has threatened the whole worlds food security programs.

    Currently to date there are food safety quality control systems such as metal detectors and x-rays we rely on as part of the everyday protection of the food we consume. These systems protect us from glass, metal and other foreign materials that could cause a risk to our health. The next step is brand protection, to ensure the products arrives to the customer as we intend it to. Historically a lot of this quality inspection is carried out by manual intervention and human visual inspection. Flawed in many ways as fatigue reduces the accuracy over time, plus that concerning factor of human contact. Other quality impacting factors such as freshness, bacterial growth and non-visible chemical changes in products are not visible to the human eye, so high speed non-contact systems are being developed to ensure what we eat is safe and to the same exceptional quality we expect every time from the brands we trust.

    The pre-prepared / ready to cook and fast food sector of the poultry industry, takes chicken from the farm to the bun almost without any human contact. High speed automation ensures we have nutritious safe food at a price the consumer can easily afford. But with the reduction in human intervention sometimes quality can suffer with small non-conformances making it to the plate such as small bone fragments, blood spots, woody breast meat, fat, skin and other foreign matter. Automate and Control LTD have developed a system to remove these non-conformances to ensure brand protection, one of the more complex non-conformances Woody Breast has been the most challenging.  

    The muscle syndrome woody / wooded breast impairs quality of chicken fillets and is a challenge to the modern poultry meat industry. The need for online detection of affected fillets for automatic quality sorting in process, is one that our customers in the poultry industry have brought to our attention.

    Tests carried out using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and crude chemical composition could estimate protein in the fillets with an extremely accuracy. This shows that there was a larger share of free water in Woody Breast fillets.

    Our non-contact QIS-4P inspection system can successfully discriminate between Woody Breast and normal fillets by measuring both protein content and degree of water binding in the muscle, both established markers for Woody Breast.

    Our system QIS-4P inspection includes the detection of small bone fragments, blood spots, fat, skin and other foreign matter, the chicken fillets with woody breast that are still fit for human consumption can also grade on severity of Woody Breast, so the meat can be reclassified for final use ensuring the best use for your produce maintaining profit margins.

    For more information contact Automate and Control LTD –  sales@automateandcontrol.co.uk

    QIS-4P meat and poultry inspection systems


    Wooden Breast Poultry Inspection System

  • Eliminate Machine Crashes

    What happens next???

    Yes, you guessed it, downtime, waste, machine jams, possible product contamination, brand damage and more.

    We all have pinch points in our production lines, especially when working with natural packaging materials that sometimes don’t conform to the tight specifications our ever-developing automation systems require. What if the very millisecond things start to go wrong, you could automatically stop your line, or automatically reject the issue maintaining your high OEE’s?

    Automate and Control LTD now produce a plug in and play integrated vision system (IVS) especially designed for simple vision inspection solutions. If you take the video example below, the very second the bottle is out of position our IVS can stop your production line, or be linked to an automatic product reject system. And that’s only one feature this system can do, it can detect the wrong colour cap or label, detect damaged components on you line, detect misalignment of a label and check product, packaging dimensions.

    To get e quick quote and advise on your application send us a video via wetransfer, or email if its under 5mb, to sales@automateandcontrol.co.uk.

    For more application information visit – https://www.automateandcontrol.com/ai-vision-systems-artificial-intelligence/

    Eliminate Machine Crashes and Jams

  • Using Industrial Vision to Reject Burnt Food on a Production Line

    Using Industrial Vision Systems to Reject Burnt and Non-compliant Food on a Production Line

    Automate and Control LTD offer bespoke quality control vision inspection systems, using advanced camera, lighting and machine learning technologies, for 100% inspection and rejection of food non-compliance during the processing and cooking process. 

    Ice cream wafer cone inspection

    During the cooking process small particles of the liquid mix can get stuck to the cooking mold causing them to burn and drop off into good product. Our system easily integrates into existing lines ensuring no product with burnt particles reach the end user spoiling their experience of your products.

    Ice cream wafer cup industrial vision system good
    Ice cream wafer cup industrial vision system good
    Ice cream wafer cup industrial vision system good burnd particle detection large
    Ice cream wafer cup industrial vision system good burnt particle detection large
    Ice cream wafer cup industrial vision system good 2mm particle detection
    Ice ream wafer cup industrial vision system 2mm burnt particle detection

  • Using vision systems for food quality control

    Using vision systems to automate quality control

    Over the past 10 years the use of vision systems has been quite basic, and human inspection for complex food inspection has been heavily relied upon. Statistics show at best human inspection of high volume manual inspection is about 87% effective, rapidly degrading over time from many factors such as environment, fatigue, training and time of day to name a few.

    With the development of multi-spectral advanced vision systems encompassing always advancing software and Machine Leaning 100% inspection with 100% effectiveness can almost be guaranteed, avoiding brand damage through customer complaints, or worse lost of a customer and product recalls.

    At Automate and Control LTD we offer advanced vision systems tailored to suit your often very complex requirements. It all starts with your product, sometimes the vision system is the easy part of the project, the manual handling of your product can be the challenging part ensuring we have 360 degree inspection can sometimes be tricky. Here are some applications vision systems have been applied. We have an ever growing list so don’t be shy get in touch to start discussing your application, no matter how weird and wonderful it is. Contact us now.

    Burnt Toast Production Line vision system

  • Food Processing and Packaging Bespoke Manufacturing


    Automate and control robotics IIOT

    Our manufacturing services provide assurance to clients that their people, processes, and products are as safe and efficient as possible. From logistics and compliance, to safety practices and training, Intertek helps you protect your personnel, hone your operations, and remain competitive in the marketplace.

    At Industify, we have decades of experience in consistently delivering the reliable and timely services our manufacturing clients need. Our experts can help you prepare your people for industry demands, enhance returns from your production and manufacturing assets, and expand your reach to new global markets. We can assist you in improving product safety and reliability, reducing costs and time-to-market, complying with local and international standards and minimising risk.

    From quality testing, manufacturing process troubleshooting and health and environmental guidance to business assurance, auditing, inspection, certification, training and consulting, we are the ideal partner to provide the tailored Total Quality Assurance solutions you require.

    Engaging our worldwide independent manufacturing support services delivers confidence and peace of mind that your business is doing its utmost to provide safe, environmentally compliant working and processing environments while delivering quality materials and products to your clients and end users.

    How We Do It

    We are guided by the same basic precepts

    Provide quality workmanship and exemplary client service. Employ people of the highest integrity and skill. Provide a safe work environment for our employees and subcontractors.

    Industry’s work ethic runs deep

    From the beginning, honesty and clear vision along with hard work and imagination have been integral parts of our steady and diversified growth.

    We have created a culture

    We have created a culture that promotes Trust and we are extremely proud of that. This culture has produced a team that likes what they are doing and that is why we do what we do so well.

    Automate and Control LTD

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