OAL News
Christmas celebrations at the University of Lincoln
This year, OAL celebrated Christmas at our long-time strategic partner, the University of Lincoln. The whole OAL team visited the university’s new Sir Isaac Newton building on Friday, 8th of December for a day of learning, reflection and refreshment.
This year, OAL celebrated Christmas at the University of Lincoln, our long-term strategic partner. The whole OAL team visited the university’s new Sir Isaac Newton building on Friday 8 December for a day of learning, reflection and refreshment. The team had the opportunity to see the latest computer science, maths, physics and engineering developments, giving them an insight into how these facilities, equipment and technologies are used in our collaborative research and development projects.
We’ve been working with the University of Lincoln for five years on a number of projects. During our partnership, we have invested over £4.5 million into developments aimed at future-proofing the food manufacturing industry, with support from UK government funding.
Our successes include Steam Infusion cooking, developed and available for testing at the University’s prestigious National Centre of Food Manufacturing. This unique method provides food manufacturers with a faster, more controlled heating and mixing technology, using steam as the motive force.
And more recently, leading professors and researchers have helped develop the APRIL Robotics Ingredient Handling system, emulating and outperforming human weighing of powders.
The day included several presentations from university staff, a tour of the new facilities, and festive refreshments in the university foyer. Hearing from prominent professors – including Professor Stefanos Kollias, the founding professor of machine learning – was very inspiring for our team. The unique expertise and the state-of-the-art facilities have been essential to helping us develop forward-thinking solutions to industry challenges.
Not everyone at OAL is directly involved with these disruptive innovation projects. By bringing the whole team together, we were able to see first-hand the step change that these projects represent for the UK’s largest manufacturing industry. In addition to nurturing relationships within our teams, we were able to see how they have contributed to these successes.
“I really enjoyed the day; it was good to spend time with my colleagues and see what we’ve been doing with the University. I now get how what I do fits into the bigger picture.”
“This was a great day and we’d love to do it again. It was the perfect opportunity to share the work that we’ve done with the University and get the whole business involved.”
The day was a fantastic way to end the year: strengthening our relationship with the University, reminiscing on the year’s achievements, and inspiring the OAL team for what promises to be an eventful – and extremely exciting – year ahead.
APRIL™ features in Made Smarter 2017 UK government review
We're very proud to feature in the UK Government Made Smarter Review 2017 launched today! The report sets out the aim for the UK to be a leader in Industrial Digitalisation, and APRIL™ Robotics was highlighted within the food section.
The report discusses the ‘perfect storm’ scenario food manufacturing faces because of an over-reliance on cheap labour:
Restriction on labour supply (due to Brexit).
Rapid above-inflation rises in labour cost (driven by the National Living Wage).
In certain sectors (e.g. fresh produce packing, sandwich manufacturing), up to 90% of the line workforce can be migrant ‘low skilled’ workers.
But for businesses which rise to this challenge, the falling cost and increased functionality of robotics offer quick productivity gains and an ability to exploit new market opportunities and grow exports. Digital technologies are at the heart of being able to exploit this opportunity which is multi-faceted and growing rapidly. Learn more in the video below where our team discuss the role of robotics in reducing capital expenditure.
You can download the full report and read more about the challenges and planned actions to enable digitalisation in food processing.
OAL's automation talent wins ‘Young Engineer of the Year’
We’re thrilled to announce that OAL's Software Engineer, Matt Ayre, won the Young Engineer of the Year award at the Food Processing Awards 2017.
Matthew Ayre at the Food Processing Awards 2017
Matt's story highlights how the food industry can attract the best and brightest; highly relevant given the well-documented engineering skills shortage in the industry. Having completed his degree in aircraft engineering, Matt changed his career path to becoming an automation engineer in the food industry because of the problem-solving challenges and variety of work involved in the UK’s largest manufacturing industry.
We nominated Matt because of the positive feedback received from our customers on his approach to work and skillset. The following references demonstrate the skills Matt has developed as an integral part of the OAL Connected team.
“I’ve been really impressed with Matt’s work ethic on site and his ability to communicate effectively with our team. He’s definitely one to watch for the future.”
“As always a difficult task to take forward the work started by others. Matt rose to the challenge of familiarising himself with the previous development allowing him to support existing engineering, expanding functionality and continuing the development to allow continued deployment to other sites.”
How will you make food tomorrow? We challenged delegates to imagine the digital food facotry of the future
The award's ceremony was held at the Doubletree Hilton, Coventry on Thursday 19 October 2017 as part of the Appetite for Engineering conference that took place earlier that day at the Manufacturing Technology Centre. Both events brought together industry professionals from all stages of their career journeys to inspire and educate, discuss and explore what the future holds for the UK’s largest manufacturing industry.
OAL was up for two other awards at the awards ceremony in addition to Matt’s entry. Our APRIL™ Cooking Cell was up for the Robotics & Automation award and our APRIL™ Robotic Ingredient Handling system up for the Future-Factory Enabling Technologies award. Both these categories were extremely competitive with the finalists from the most innovative companies the food manufacturing industry has to offer. And, although we didn’t win, it was still fantastic for us to be recognised as one of the best.
The awards season is not yet over for OAL. We’re flying the food industry flag at the cross-sector IET, Institue of Engineering and Technology Awards. APRIL™ Robotics is shortlisted for the Manufacturing Technology award in a highly competitive competition.
There were over 300 entries to the awards from 25 countries from industries including aerospace, automotive and pharmaceutical. We’ll find out if we’ve been successful on the 15th November at the ceremony at The Brewery, London.
The year then ends with the Food Matters Live awards where our unique cooking technology Steam Infusion has been shortlisted in the Best Food and Drink Process or Technology category.
OAL to speak at food robotics event at CAFRE, NI
Are you looking to introduce more automation and robotics into your food factory? Join OAL at the Robotic Automation in Food Processing seminar hosted by the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise. The event is taking place at the Food Innovation Centre, Loughry Campus, Cookstown, Northern Ireland on Wednesday 25th October 2017.
The one-day seminar brings food manufacturing and agricultural professionals together to answer these key questions:
What capabilities does robotic automation offer that could be utilised?
How easily can it be implemented and maintained?
Is robotic automation right for implementation into your processes?
How cost effective can it be?
And now robotics and automation are much more advanced and affordable, we will be discussing what new opportunities this presents the agriculture and food processing industry.
OAL's Jake Norman will be building on from this and talking about how OAL are putting robotics and automation at the heart of food processing with our APRIL Robotics solutions.
Hear how we have invested, researched and developed the very latest and advanced robotics and automation technology to help food manufacturers solve their challenges driven by the increasing living wage, flatline productivity and food deflation.
Start your journey towards increasing productivity and efficiency with robotics and automation.
APRIL™ Robotics finalist at the Institution of Engineering and Technology Awards 2017
We’re very pleased to announce that APRIL™ Robotics is shortlisted for the Best Manufacturing Technology category at the Institution of Engineering and Technology Innovation Awards 2017. It's fantastic to be flying the flag for the food industry in a very competitive category. The Best Manufacturing Technology competition received over 300 entries from 25 countries from industries including aerospace, automotive and pharmaceutical!
The esteemed judging panel including the Director of Innovate UK was looking for innovative uses of automation to improve aspects such as:
Quality / consistency
Cost reduction
Energy efficiency
Reduction in pollutants
Flexible / agile production
Market response / customisation
If you’ve seen the APRIL Cooking Cell in action, then you’ll know how different APRIL is and how the advanced the technology, engineering and design can improve the way we handle and process food products..
Other finalists in the Manufacturing Technology category include:
Plastic Logic Germany
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
FliteTrak
Biohm Ltd.