How do conveyors help in food processing?

The majority of the food that we consume is packaged. Rarely is there items fresh, with the exception of fruits and vegetables. This means there are many steps taken in order to get that food into the packages and the faster it is done the more product can be shipped to the stores for sales.

Imagine cooking up a batch of cereal, then checking it for burnt pieces or problems, then placing it into a bag, then a box. It's quite a few steps, and you have to repeat the process as a case of cereal is 12 boxes. So you would have to do this 12 times then box them all up for shipping. With one person and a little bit of counter space it can be done, but will take hours to do. So manufacturers got smart and started using conveyors to speed up the process.

There are tons of different conveyors that are used in processing food and the start in the kitchen with the cooking process. These conveyors move the food along that needs to be cooked, allowing hundreds of times more food to be processed then would be otherwise. Then the food is taken to other conveyors some mechanical and some manual that will move the food along in order to be packaged and boxed each step of the way. The conveyors work to not only move the food to its next destination for processing but also allows the operators to be checking for defects and problems each step of the way. It's an efficient and steady way to manufacture a large of amount of food in a short amount of time.

These methods apply to fresh fruit and vegetable as well with the conveyors on a more open platform. They are wide and manage to flow through with operators on both side of it in order to eliminate any bad produce so that it doesn't hit the market. It also allows them to be tagged in the grocery stores with their own private conveyors to handle everything on.

The conveyors come in different shapes and sizes. Most of the ones that are used in large factories consist of motorized units that require someone to turn them on and off, stopping them on occasion if there is an issue. Some are portable, called nestaflex, or grids, racks and other names that help people identify them. They are used to unload and load the trucks as well as handle cooking, packaging, boxing, labeling, coloring and flavoring. Many of them use rollers underneath a moving belt and some run down shoots for momentum and easy processing.

It takes speed and precision on the workforce that is used in order to be spotting any issues with the food, which is why several are used in the process. In case one person misses something there are generally three others that will spot it. This not only provides jobs, and skills, but allows more product to be processed at a quicker pace then someone trying to do something themselves in a little kitchen.