How Can Freeze-Drying Automation Unlock Massive Growth?

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hey welcome back to another episode of the frozen assets podcast Series where we're focusing on entrepreneurship in
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the freeze drying space specifically and today we're going to talk to Eis
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automation this company is very agnostic with different products that they help
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businesses scale their efficiencies in production and it made a lot of sense
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for me to bring on Josh who's the owner of Eis because even though we're doing
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freeze drying it's still a product that needs to be packaged there's a lot of us that have either grown a business to the
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scale that we want it to or you're kind of stuck in this Middle Ground of like what is the next step for me I've got a
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lot of demand for my product and I need to figure out ways to one maybe purchase
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more freeze dryers I need to find a way to reduce my labor that I'm doing because it's very stressful so we're
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going to talk about that with Josh today how does freeze drying apply to what he
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does for his clients in automation Josh thanks for joining me on this podcast and and helping us better understand
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automation for packaging products so I wanted have you introduce yourself and
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tell us about what Eis does and why you started it and kind of dumb it down for
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us of what you actually do for clients yeah thank you David um I'm Josh with e
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automation uh I'm the founder of the business um we are in our 12th year I
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founded a business in Las Vegas uh in the quintessential American fashion of
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uh in the garage on the knees and now we are close to a for 15,000 feet facility
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and over time our Focus has shifted to uh the automation World specifically a
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sub segment of that that automation World which we call end ofline uh product handling and packaging that uh
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can include um many different types of packaging it's not necessarily limited to food it could be any type of other
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product what's more important for us is not so much what the product is but it's in a g
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given size range so if we um package or handle a product it's not so matter
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doesn't matter too much for us whether or not we package or handle a mouse or if it's freeze stried food as long as
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within a given payload and size range then it's a good fit for us and we can bring value to the customer's table um
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End of Line basically sometimes also referred as End of Line a second half of
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line uh typically involves uh some sort of manipulation of the product that could be batching
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stacking sorting weighing uh it gets packaged into a secondary container and
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everything around that is what we specializ in oftentimes including robotics all the way down uh to the
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palletizer bringing the product on a pallet I would think that you're using a lot of Robotics or what types of things
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would I pay attention to if I was going to look up on videos and things like that what what is the actual machine or
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things look like yeah it's a very good question and this is actually a very common topic um maybe to step back a
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little bit um what's happening in the US right now is a little bit of a Revival of manufacturing so the United States
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becomes the country again that manufactures products and and brings manufacturing back home from maybe
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overseas and um so there's two types of customers new manufacturers that start a
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product and then also customers who bring manufacturing activity back which is called Under the Umbrella
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reshoring um when you are a smaller manufacturer um typically you start out
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doing everything by hand and you're at a small scale so as you as you grow over time your volume goes up you you start
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to sit sit down and think about how can I uh put out this larger volume in a
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repeatable fashion right and and that's of course includes you just alluded to
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it a big portion of that is what we call Touch Point reduction touch Point reduction is
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especially uh important in the food industry where ideally you have as few
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touch points human touch points as possible for the food to stay fresh and
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also not get touched and contaminated in the process so when you have foods and
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many other products too outside of the food industry typically you have two stages you have what is called a primary
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packaging that is the actual product itself packaged maybe in a a bag a
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pre-made bag or it is in a flow wrap package like you go to a grocery store
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and you see a Snickers bar and it has three three fins or three seals the two seals at the end and a third seal on the
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bottom that's called a flow wrapping product and the flow wrapper is Quint
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essential primary packaging now when you distribute a product then often times
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you distribute it in batches a larger amounts so you might have seen um in the
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store that the individual snakers bars for example are inside a carton and that would be considered a a
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secondary packaging process this is typically what we are involved in more sometimes we get involved into primary
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packaging that means uh your freeze tried good would make it into a pre-made
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bag for example and then many of these pre-made bags get then inserted into a carton for distribution purposes yeah
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and when you're talking about different types of ways to do end of line or kind
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of reduce the touch points I just thought of something you know when you're looking at a commercial grade freeze dryer which is most likely the
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companies that are going to be paying attention to this podcast about you know you're looking to actually get out of
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the home freeze dryer um at least you probably have close to a dozen of these
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and you're looking at a commercial grade freeze dryer that has a larger footprint but can do more batches and um or more
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product within one cycle time so I can kind of see it as like a lot of these commercial grade freeze dryers have
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these large stacking racks but they come on Wheels out of the freeze dryer I
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guess the the ways that to reduce that that touch point would be that you're going to roll those stands with all
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those racks of freeze-dried product to a an area that has you know robotic arms
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that kind of like dump the product out of those trays and then put them on an assembly line to get packag is that a
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very layman term scenario yeah you could do that as a matter of fact it's very close to one of the ways you could do it
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so the automation industry is you can think of there's two approaches you have
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typically heavily standardized equipment that could serve many Industries so you
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could say I have a feeding device that fills the bag and that is a standard p
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of equipment but now you say we have freeze dried goods and they're almost
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similar to maybe a baking sheet and you would like to automatically take the
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sheet out and empty it into a bulk feeder for example right so this would be more of a custom project where you
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would work with a robotics company where you say hey I have all these different uh racks on uh with casters and I would
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like to bring them to X location and then have a robot pull each sheet empty
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it for example into a hopper and then from that Hopper you have a feeder and a wire and automatically feed them into a
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pre-made bag for example yeah while the pre-made bagging machine being a standard piece of equipment but the
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robotic side of things would be a somewhat custom uh device from the outside looking in it really appears
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that getting a machine to do that to increase production time which is great for me it's only really possible for a
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large company with big pocketbooks is that true maybe historically that was
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the case but not necessarily today anymore so there is equipment available
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and we cater towards many uh customers who are maybe below 10 employees right
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um it doesn't always have to be a very expensive capital expenditure piece of equipment um when you scale a business
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and you you're at a given stage with your business and and a certain volume often times there are smaller tabletop
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systems available you could purchase so you can basically step through and purchase equipment that grows with you
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of course oftentimes what people think about when you think of automation is a large machine and everything is fully
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automated but often times that really is only the end kind of system um and the
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upper echelon type of system but there's many steps in between and and typically
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a very typical path is to go a path of semi automation right right so you might
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automate certain aspects of your process that is very intensive labor intensive
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um and also the reasons why you automate might not be the same for everyone right
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in in the food world the automation might be uh the reason might be to to avoid
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maybe any trouble with the FDA and you don't want any touch points right um for another company um the automation the
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main driver might be orgon omcs right to eliminate repetitive motion injuries and
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things like this right so automation can have many reasons to be implemented in the end um I always say automation is a
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really good fit for highly repetitive tasks and um in the end people don't
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want to be robots right for lack of a better term so if you do something 70 uh
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several thousand times a day on a given shift um the issue that oftentimes comes along
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with that is uh you know is the retention of the employees uh workers comp cost might go up because of
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repetitive motion or ergonomics issues um and quality suffers because we simply
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can't focus for extended periods of times on a repetitive task humans are
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not built to do that while a robot or a piece of equipment will repeatedly do it in the same fashion no matter how many
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hours it has run that day so you saw solving in multiple layers of problems when you take the step of automation a
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lot of people who are freeze drying get into the different modes and processes that they've just always known it's
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tough to kind of shift your mindset to that things could be done better even
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though you've always done it the other way and one of those that I've always done is I've always physically stamped
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my bags um I actually have one of my bags right here and I physically stamp my bags on here now am small enough but
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I can I I definitely can see how I'm not meant to do it like 500 bags at a time I
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got I can stamp about a hundred and then my mind kind of goes to like I need a break or uh my my accuracy kind of
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changes because I just need a mental break from that versus I can see that if I did go to something that could print
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off the labels uh you know in bulk it's like that machine doesn't get tired it
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just runs out of ink uh so it's that's correct very yeah um and I think people who are
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listening too you know I think about any of the workers that you have or even if
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you're still doing it yourself I know what people are doing and with especially with freeze-dried Skittles or
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other type of candy you are literally taking your hand or you're taking a scoop and you're dumping it into a bag
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or a container corre that's because you just haven't you kind of Hit the threshold of how much labor you're
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willing to put into doing that for how many periods of time and if you're at the point right now where you're like
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this is causing me stress it's thinking it's causing me to think about exiting doing my business because I've been
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doing it for years the reason to talk to someone like yourself is worth it even for a consult because you can kind of
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see like wow yeah I could be focusing on marketing I could be focusing on sales I could be focusing on the things that
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don't require a ton of Labor uh to to do that that's that's correct and what
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you're describing is very common for us to actually go into a company and toward
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the facility and help these potential customers to identify areas that would
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be a good fit for automation exactly like you described you you're a specialist in making
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freeze-dried foods and the next customers uh maybe a gift card
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manufacturing customer they're good at making gift cards all day everyone has their focus um but you might not know
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exactly what is out there that could help me increase productivity uh in you know maintain quality and also lower my
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uh unit cost right so uh that's typically where we come in oftentimes
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can identify areas fairly quickly where we can bring True Value to an operation we um will only do that for the areas of
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course where we you know that's our our um strength and um we will maybe refer
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customers to other companies that that uh they serve better there um automation
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just tends to be a fairly large term where a lot of things are lumped together so um but if you if you have a
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good partner and and you are a manufacturer who's in growth mode um I
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think it's very important to early on start to think about an automation
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strategy and that is something that is not at hoc and happens for three months this is almost something that goes along
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with the things that you just mentioned several times you know marketing is something that you want to do
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continuously it's not something I only do for two months out of the year you know I always describe um automation
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it's like brushing teeth you don't do it for 12 hours once a year right you do it
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you know for a few minutes twice a day every day of the year right and that's what will get you the results right and
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and when you come into that that manufacturing space from a competition
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perspective when you look at it from from a Marketplace perspective um you'll
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always oftentimes see that the companies who have implemented that strategy um
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and even if they've only gotten maybe 10 15% better every year after three years
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that company is 45% ahead of the competition I think of like a real world
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example I Supply my my freeze Dr fruit to a company that does corporate gift
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baskets and the only thing that they have in automation that they invested in was a like shrink wrapping machine yeah
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um so they have different types of baskets for different sizes so they can fit different types of products and so
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there might be 10 or 12 or a dozen you know whatever type of products there are but they have different baskets well she
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had told me that when they first started the lady that they bought it from she
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was wrapping those things herself and tying the bows and doing all these things and they quickly found out that
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they didn't want to do that anymore so they bought this machine that literally they just put the basket with everything
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on it and it goes on a conveyor belt and it has about the size of a microwave
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area that goes that goes in the basket goes through and it literally shrink wraps it seals it and makes the little
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fine print Like Glue to it and then out comes a perfectly shrink wrapped
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corporate gift basket yes and it's the way that they do things now they are seasonal so come September and October
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and November you know they they are making so many so that that was really important for them to have that type of
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automation for that so I I wanted to bring that up so that that makes a lot
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of sense and that's only one machine that's one machine and shrink wrapping is very common together with flow
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wrapping um we have had customers that they have had a a heat gun in their hand
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and literally wrap things by hand and then use the heat gun to shrink each individual piece and once they get a
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shrink wrap machine all of a sudden they can wrap 30 for 35 uh pieces a minute
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where before they did maybe to a minute right yes so um automation always
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requires some volume right I think that that's you have to justify it with the volume but um once you're at that stage
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it doesn't have to be incredibly expensive um to take your your point with the shrink wrap um really small
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shrink wrap units they probably start at around $7,500 right and and um that's a really
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well-built unit maybe from Taiwan and that'll give you service for many years
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to come and then there's many many different pieces of equipment all the way to full automation um but you can
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step through and the equipment often times can just grow with you Joshua I want to talk about stages what are the
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indicators based on your experience with clients today and in the past that have
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caused them to actually say enough is enough I need to go start looking at researching end ofline systems what are
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those indicators especially when the last maybe after covid it has shifted a little bit and and not so much that we
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have to um point out or or help customers find find the place for
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automation what really has happened especially after covid is that people
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approach us and say we can't produce because we can't find employees and if
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we find them we can't retain them right so this NeverEnding cycle of hiring
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rehiring retraining makes quality suffer so bad that um they want to go to
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Automation in the past it was more that we had to help them maybe point out
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areas now that really has shifted quite a bit that we are approached actively
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with the fact that um people simply can't produce anymore because they can't find people who want to do these highly
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repetitive tasks they in and they out and when they find people they
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oftentimes quickly you know leave these positions again so that is where we
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entering the world of maybe uh misconception about the automation world right and especially robotics because
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it's oftentimes portrayed as something that eliminates positions or jobs the
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reality is really that people don't want to do these jobs in the first place what this automation oftentimes does and we
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see this over and over again with customers in just about any field is
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that it increases employee retention because now these people that otherwise
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would have left are now being given a meaningful task and now they have a sense of pride in that job they have a
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sense of career path in front of them instead of waking up or worrying on a Sunday night oh my God tomorrow I have
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this eight hour shift where I have to do this motion 16,000 times a day that's not something to look forward to right
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right so these are automations automation systems that make perfect sense and these people now will stay we
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I had one customer specifically tell me that there was concern in the group of
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employees about the first robot the first ever robot taking the jobs away
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and after six seven or eight months of the robot working in the facility being deployed and act now the fear went away
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and now they they call themselves robot operators right so it shifted from Fear
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to a sense of Pride of the technology right yeah and I I can see that practically speaking you know you think
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about the minimum wage that all of our states have but also we're evolving to
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where it's really expensive with inflation and the cost of living in America that uh people need higher pay
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and that's why they're not staying in jobs too and so when at if you're paying
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someone especially to unwrap freeze-dried can unwrap candy so that it
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can be freeze-dried if you're paying someone even let's say $15 an hour you
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know multiply that by about 2,000 which is the average hours in a given year that's a
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$30,000 average pay but that's I would think that you're making money on that
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employee if they stick around for the entire year doing that kind of mundane
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task um but if they leave and you have to retrain three people in that year for
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the same job at $15 you probably spent three times that salary in cost just in
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time and training so if that machine costs you $330,000 to automate what
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they're doing you're already saving money uh on your training and trying to
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find those people so I agree with you yeah it's it's something you have to be open to and and so you have to you have
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to kind of adapt to what the the market is like it's just the fact when you look at product Cycles in the
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in the consumer world then it's totally normal for us to purchase a new phone a new laptop every s you know and and when
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you look at a new phone and you know then you have a new release and this year it's green instead of orange whatever the case might be right but
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we're used to fast product Cycles in the manufacturing world that is somewhat exactly the polar opposite because you
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equ you know investing in a piece of equipment that might give you another 10 15 years of service right right until it
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reaches its end of life and when you have something that provides you a service as long um people always look at
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the high cost that you just described and so now it's a justification of Labor savings right and the equipment
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automation industry actually has evolved with that so historically um you would look at a a
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proposal a quote for a piece of equipment and that would clearly be in a capital expenditure category right you
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have to have the fun you might have to go to the bank and get a loan somehow you have to pay this big upfront cost
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and and spread it over many years of operation right so the equipment and automation industry has actually evolved
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with I think this new need for a different approach in in how to get equipment to manufacturers and that is
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Shifting the capital expenditure into an operational expense so what you find more and more and we are included in
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that to some extent is that equipment is not offered only for sale as a outright
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sale offer but uh you have um systems or abbreviations I think stolen a little
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bit from the software World SAS software as a service now you have M machine as a service you have RAs robot as a service
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right and all of a sudden you don't have to come up with this large expense up front but you essentially getting a
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piece of equipment for a continuous monthly operational expense almost like
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an employee without having to come up with this large lump sum at the time of purchase what is the difference between
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a business using capital expenditure versus making it an operating expense
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and and this really depends on how um the company runs financially in and
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smaller companies oftentimes there's not the capital available um just sitting in
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a bank account in form of calf to to purchase a piece of equipment so if if
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you go to aut route um there might be smaller items available like I just described these very semi-automatic
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shrink W that starts at maybe 7500 but the reality is when you're entering the equipment world you also
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quickly venture out in the six figures plus right so let's say a company is at
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a stage where it is ready to you know could really benefit from a piece of
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equipment that would automate a certain aspect of the process and let's say
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that's $125,000 but most businesses do not have this kind of cash
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sitting around so their option uh their only option would be to continue the way
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they have been and maybe save up until they reach that point and it could be years in the future or they approach a
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bank for a Capital Equipment loan you know as a as a capital um uh loan for
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the equipment or now manufacturers offer the machine as a service so to speak so
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they say hey we'll give you this machine and instead of purchasing it from us um
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we're going to do a 36 month plan or whatever May the case may be and instead
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of coming up with this large lump sum up front you can have this piece of equipment maybe for let's say I'm going
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to throw a number out $5,000 a month and that includes the wear and tear parts
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and uh phone support for example yeah and this way that makes it much more
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accessible to a manufacturer who doesn't maybe even want to spend the money maybe some customers have the money but they
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don't want to pour all that cash Reserve into a piece of equipment but can you
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know with their operational um income they have every month just cover the cost of that piece of equipment and
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oftentimes with these processes there is a buyout option in a few years where you've used a piece of equipment you
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like it and now you you've already used it and then there's a lower buyout option right yeah it's like it's a Le
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like equipment and basically especially on the freeze dried candy side and freeze freeze
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drying I I know that there are a lot of companies who they are literally Turning
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Away business because they cannot keep up with the demand not only with the
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machines to freeze dry it but even if they had the machines they can't hire or
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do it fast enough to fulfill the orders so if you have a a a regional
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distributor that wants a 100,000 bags of freeze-dried candy a month for their
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first order can you fulfill that in the in 60 days can you fulfill that in 30
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days um and if you can't then you're never going to get another reorder that's right and so uh even though
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$5,000 a month seems even still a lot it's like well yeah but now you can
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accept that order that gives you 50% of the deposit of that 100,000 unit and now
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you do have the money to pay for that monthly expenditure that's right and now you have one the logo to talk to other
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Distributors that hey I'm doing fulfillment for this wholesale company that you know so now you can go and sell
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more now you can hire more people correct and and figure that all out that's correct yeah and there's even
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some more creative approaches to this dilemma with with the high entry-level cost if if you will um is often times uh
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machines are offered now um basically as a almost like a printer back in the days
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with a click charge right where the manufacturer of the equipment says hey um you know we let's do this 36-month
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contract and you'll give us 1.5 cents per pack that runs to the machine right
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now you have a direct Revenue stream associated with that machine expense and you can do a pretty clear calculation of
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what your cost cost will be for the unit we've done something like this in the past I mean it's and and of course if you run a lot then the machine costs a
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lot but it gives you an entry to a piece of equipment and otherwise you would not have so there's there's many
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manufacturers who offer these very flexible uh you know equipment um um
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acquisition systems now hey Josh my next question is about the sales process that you have within Eis because yes we're
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talking hypothetically about different scenarios and things but for someone who has a freeze-dried business business and
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is trying to scale what can I expect that process is like for you what do you
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talk to me about what do you want to know about what should I have prepared for you it's important to do maybe some
29:09
homework and find out what companies um there might be companies that specialize
29:15
in your specific industry right so that that could be the case too um and
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working with someone who specializes often times very beneficial because they've already done the mistakes they
29:26
have developed products around them they know some of the answers that maybe a company um who doesn't know your indust
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that doesn't know your industry would have to learn that is actually most of the time the case uh for us we we are
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approached and we have a specific skill set that differentiates us from maybe some of the competitors but that also
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means that we will have to learn about your industry right so um if there's standard options standard pieces of
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equipment that are specifically made for your industry we will always say hey we know someone there's a company who ators
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towards this and um they can help you better than we can um then we're entering the world the segment of the
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end of line uh maybe some primary packaging but secondary packaging all the way to the palletizing uh where
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product gets handled it gets batched sorted stacked manipulated in some way
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and on top of uh that maybe the data is managed and tracked right so um a big
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change to maybe even a few years ago manufacturing is that manufacturing you had a production line and and a given
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machine or a production line was a source of a given product and and in today's world typically production line
30:40
is not only a source of a product anymore it's also a source of a data stream and especially as you go up in
30:47
volume you typically would like to know what's happening on the floor what are
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we doing why are we down how much throughput did we have how much waste did we have um if we had downtime why
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did we have downtime right so and that's typically where we come in with our software packages and things like this
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and we talk the customer through what he would like from us uh out to get out of the system and and that is aside from
31:13
all the hardware right um but if you approach us very common as we go through
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a project Discovery phase right and the customer would reach out initially and
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then we would um basically hear the customer out what are you doing what are you currently doing what would you like
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to achieve and maybe also give some hints and tips on um what we've done on the past and what we how can we see
31:38
solving this problem for the customer right and that then goes into a stage to
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eventually you've you've done a lot of um you know exchange details and we're talking sometimes weeks and months right
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and eventually you go to like a kickoff stage at which point in time um if the
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customer does not um write it uh inhouse we will write it for the customer a very
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detailed statement of work so um a lot of the the lines we design and Implement
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have some tailoring to it or they're specific to to a product or specific to a process so it's very important that
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you write down um in in detail what the requirements are and how we're going to
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solve them so you have basically this unifying document where both both teams
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uh know exactly what the expectation is and what the deliverables are right um
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this is a very critical phase because that's where a lot of projects can go south um when things are said in a phone
32:47
call hey uh I forgot to tell you something and you're sitting on a red light out in the field and don't you
32:53
remember I told you this six weeks ago on the phone right um C you remember I I
32:58
sent you that text message and in the end you have a unifying document to
33:04
protect everyone from this kind of scope creep and and um miscommunication if you
33:10
will right and in the end um that increases the success rate
33:16
dramatically um from there on out once you find that agreement we'll go to like a pre-design type stage where we make
33:22
preliminary designs uh talk it through with the customer and always make sure we're communicating step of the way with
33:28
the customer and once we have that we go through the final design phase uh again
33:34
review this with the customer this is also the point where uh somebody will be assigned a dedicated project manager so
33:41
the sales engineer will not be involved anymore but a dedicated project manager will take over and basically manage all
33:47
the given details and um we're going to design build fabrication and um and then do final
33:55
testing so oftentimes at the very and the last link in the chain is what's called an fat or an SAT sometimes both
34:03
it's a factory acceptance test or a site acceptance test and that's the point where you take out that statement of
34:10
work from the beginning and now you start checking box and say does it do this does it do this does it do this and
34:16
if it doesn't you have to correct it right it sounds like it's very much like a general contractor for building a
34:23
house or building a commercial space you you have to go through through periods
34:29
where you work with an architect to do the design and they coordinate with the structural engineers the MEP the
34:35
electrical all of that and then uh it goes through kind of the permit stage
34:41
and the design approval and then you're ready to rock but then you also the one who helps on the general contractor side
34:49
as it relates to con construction where you're saying okay this is the pieces that we need from this to assemble this
34:57
area um things like that how are you able to do all this from your headquarters in Las Vegas for someone
35:03
who's in Louisiana or someone who's in Florida how are you able to help people across the country uh when it comes to
35:10
the assembly part of it so there's a few different aspects to this but I'm going to answer your question in terms of um
35:16
maybe um Geographic proximity so we do have systems in stock globally um and i'
35:25
have to think but we have small system in shenzen China we have systems in
35:30
England Holland Canada uh Australia um and and luckily we haven't
35:38
had to fly out there yet right so so every single piece of equipment we uh
35:44
put out has remote login capability so if a customer has an issue and he needs
35:50
troubleshooting all he needs to do is plug it into the internet port and we
35:55
can access the machine from anywhere in the world anywhere in the world right so
36:01
and we can help troubleshoot so point you know to make Give an example we uh
36:07
we helped the customer I think maybe two two and a half months ago um they have one of our emotion control Servo systems
36:14
we helped them down in Argentina so we logged in remotely from Las Vegas we saw what was wrong with the
36:20
system the customer wanted a software update on a touchcreen so we just reprogrammed the touchs screen pushed the new software and never had to fly
36:27
right that's very powerful because it it saves a lot of cost and time so
36:34
historically you would have to schedule an engineer or a technician to go out there so now it takes two weeks to get
36:40
there now you have the flight cost accommodation per DM right the time and
36:46
what used to maybe be two three weeks is now a matter of waiting at the worst one
36:52
day for someone to log in and and solve a problem um in terms of complex I I'll
36:58
touch a little bit on this so we specifically do not offer systems that
37:03
fall into the category of what we call system integration so system integration is typically a project where
37:12
and a system already exists and then something gets attached to added to
37:17
modified um because um the farther the customer is
37:23
away and you have to do these types of um integration services and pieces of
37:28
equipment that gets attached or added to the success rate goes down sure simp
37:33
that because we can't fully test 100% at our site right because you need that
37:38
other piece of equipment to fully test the system and and uh designing and building something that we can't test
37:45
100% on site is typically projects we don't um um you know go out and and
37:52
offer the customers now that being said the closer it gets to Las Vegas the more
37:58
custom we will get right yes simply because we can serve that customer better but we go and build systems for
38:04
customers who far away let's take a standardized pelletizer right we have a pelletizing system that is a standard
38:10
product for us um then not a problem we can sell it to the east coast because it's a standard piece of equipment
38:16
there's no custom aspect to it um or very little custom aspect and then we
38:21
can increase our our shipping radius if you will so the more standardized it is
38:27
the farther it reaches the less standed it is the the reaches I can see that so
38:33
there's you know for anybody there's standardized ways of of having things you have your own products that are very
38:39
easy to for yourself to scale but then you also have um things that are going to be more customized in freeze drying
38:46
we have to we're freeze drying candy most a lot of times and a lot of candy comes in a wrapper form do you see there
38:52
being any way to automate the unwrapping of candy I can almost see is it possible
38:58
to have two robotic arms like on an assembly line literally like catching
39:03
each piece to pull it apart to like unwrap it we're entering the realm of um
39:09
very specific problems for specific Industries often times I think we underestimate how complex human motion
39:18
vision and hearing actually is humans do very complex tasks without even noticing
39:25
that they're doing complex tasks so when you unwrap something you have to have
39:30
complex motion multiaxis articulated motion right and that motion is Guided
39:36
by your visual Instinct so you would have to have a system that can see know
39:42
what it's looking at identify the right contact points and then dynamically
39:48
guide an end of arm tool to do this in a different position for each piece right
39:55
um so seems very seems very expensive it's yeah I mean it gets really complex
40:00
I think we're now entering a stage where these things are very feasible especially with AI vision technology but
40:07
they are not in the category of entry level yeah and and I would ask the
40:12
question if there's a significant volume behind that could whoever is manufacturing the candy deliver it to
40:19
the freeze dry industry on wrapped right because we're also entering the the space of how much waste are generating
40:26
right right um and that might be okay if it's a few hundred pieces every day on a small level eventually you probably would want
40:34
to not have to unwrap it in the first place I would guess yeah I agree with you yeah it's just a a question that I
40:40
was like okay I know I I know every I know everyone in freeze drying candy is
40:47
doing this yeah and so that was my question but yeah yeah I mean you could probably have a tabletop set up where
40:53
you don't pull yourself anymore but you can have a robot arm inserting the candy
40:59
into maybe a two axis system and this twoa pulls apart and rotates and the candy falls out and the paper's
41:05
discarded right so you could have a random um a pick robot right that picks
41:12
from a basically like a bulk tray and then inserts it in a small unit that unwraps it and it falls out that's
41:19
something that might be feasible on a table toop setup but even that might you know drive cost in the tens of the th
41:25
tens of thousands of dollars yeah for a small um um project and often times not
41:32
just the hardware but if you sit down with an engineering team and they have to develop the solution so there's a
41:39
fairly large development cost typically associated with that thanks a lot for joining us on the podcast and talking
41:45
about this I think there's a lot of great little nuggets that we've gained from this yeah and it's definitely very
41:51
helpful for us to think about as we're freeze drying and we're thinking about being entrepreneurs ways to innovate um
41:59
so that we don't have to uh look at things that uh complicate things in our
42:04
business so yeah thank you David and I hope this was helpful to you and also your audience and if you have any
42:10
questions in the future anything comes up or one of your uh podcast listeners is any questions feel free to reach out
42:17
and and we'll answer the best we can all right take care so much thank you
42:23
[Music]

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