My grandkids called the other night asking if I could pick them up from school the next day. Easy question. Of course I could.
And, they asked: A supermarket had installed a robotic frozen yogurt kiosk and they wanted to see it. Of course to that too. I’d seen something similar at PackExpo but never in the wild. You put your money in and select flavors and toppings. The Yaskawa robot dances as it picks up the cup, dispenses the yogurt and toppings and delivers it. It’s very nifty and you can see more info atwww.robofusion.com.
Great marketing concept but I especially liked it as a changeover, packaging and automation professional. It pressed all my buttons. One was its ability to provide about 27 different flavors of yogurt from a single nozzle. They use a single, neutral, flavor of yogurt and mix in the flavors on the fly.
Are any of you are doing this in your plants with your products? Merck, Allen-Bradley, a cosmetics manufacture and others run lines that make one-off products at production speeds. Coke has their Share-A-Coke promotion put individual’s names on the labels. These may be exceptions but there are many more opportunities for this concept.
Yes, of course it will cost more to produce like this instead of in batches. Yes, it will take packagers out of their comfort zones. Ahhh… But think of the advantages:
- Rapid response times gain market share. A national battery brand gained 8% market share producing small orders for 48 hour turnaround.
- Making one at a time eliminates the downtime from changeover between batches.
- Making to order eliminates the need for finished goods inventory and can lessen WIP and raw material inventories.
- Making to order can eliminate other issues. Label purchasing, inventory and control issues disappear if blank or generic labels, printed at application are used.
I suspect the benefits will outweigh the costs, particularly for first movers.
Be first in the market place by being first to your customers. Give them exactly what they want exactly when they want it.
