July 2019

| 46 | July 2019 www.smartmachinesandfactories.com | INTERVIEWS & REPORTS | At the recent B&R Innovations Day: Enabling the Adaptive Machine, held at the Williams F1 headquarters in Oxford, Sam Tinsley, managing director of Cutting Edge Services - supplier of food processing machinery, services and consumables - highlighted how the company is working with B&R to add incremental automation solutions in an under-invested and low-tech industry such as butchery, in order to raise productivity and address labour shortages for the industry. Smart Machines & Factories’ Aaron Blutstein reports. Translator in a box T oday, automation technologies are being commercialised that put smart-factory functionalities in the realm of real-world production and packaging. This new generation of machinery is a must if producers are to cost effectively meet the expectations of consumers who are increasingly used to getting precisely what they want, quickly, online. For end-user products manufacturers in volume industries such as food and beverage, consumer packed goods, or medical devices this presents very real challenges that affect how they operate their businesses to remain competitive and profitable. For example switching from glass bottles to plastic, or from rigid to flexible containers, will require a