From small breweries to mega factories, Heinekens’ logistics and production processes are becoming increasingly complex and machinery more sophisticated. This brings both challenges and opportunities.
Our first priority here at Heineken is to keep our people safe. Dennis van der Plas, senior global lead packaging lines at Heineken
The fallen bottle picker is a robotic solution to make its breweries safer and more attractive to employees while enabling a more flexible organisation.
The bottling lines at Heineken produce up to 60,000 bottles per hour. During this process, bottles can fall or break. The Fallen Bottle Picker then intervenes and ensures that these fallen bottles do not block the production line. It thus removes safety risks for operators in their daily work, which is a priority for Heineken.
The biggest challenge in detecting and tracking fallen beer bottles was that they never stop moving. In contrast with many existing robot systems that take a single photo to inform the movements of the robot, the Fallen Bottle Picker uses vision technology to direct the robot with cameras. This allows the robot to quickly adapt to an environment where everything is constantly changing.
We are developing to become more and more high tech in our breweries. Dennis van der Plas, senior global lead packaging lines at Heineken
TNO worked on the control and movements of the robot, while RoboHouse took on the vision technology aspect. They then wrote a programme together that determines the speed of the robot from the moment a fallen bottle is detected. This enables the robot to move with the bottle based on its calculated speed. Real time response is what makes this robot so different from existing ones.
About Heineken
Dutch brewing company Heineken is one of the largest beer producers in the world with more than 70 production facilities globally. With projects like the Fallen Bottle Picker, the company is firmly underway to becoming a global high-tech operation.