Automated Bag Loader Commercial­ization

Situation

After completing Sealed Air’s rotational technical leadership program in research and development, I joined a project field testing and commercializing a poultry bag loader. The system had already been through lab testing and was put into the field for the next stage of testing. The overall development timeline for this project was half the usual for Cryovac (a brand of Sealed Air) food equipment.

Tasks

The project objectives were to:

  1. Meet the performance and cost targets from the project specifications.
  2. Achieve product commercialization in time for the 2018 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE), the major tradeshow for the poultry industry.

What I Did

I spent several months on this project. To begin, I spent several weeks at a chicken processing facility doing equipment testing. This generally involved collecting data on the equipment performance (speed and accuracy), videotaping key equipment operations, and troubleshooting problems. Initially, the equipment had considerable difficulty, partially due to size variation in the chickens. Some system components were adjustable, but some were not. After a shift was over, I would design part revisions that would be manufactured the next day. We were able to reach the performance targets by monitoring the effects of iterative design changes and adjustments.

Having achieved the performance targets, we then prepared manufacturing drawings for the equipment. There were a number of changes made during the initial assembly and testing (before me) that had not been fully documented, so the physical prototype was regularly referenced during this process. Getting input from coworkers on the manufacturing floor, I also helped improve the design for manufacturing and assembly.

Result

The equipment satisfied its specifications and was commercialized at IPPE 2018 as a modular component in the Cryovac Whole Bird Automation System.

Project link: https://sealedair.com/food-care/whole-bird-automation