January/February 2024 - 10

START-OF-LINE
machine
EVOLUTION
AI PAVING PATH FOR
PRODUCTION LINE ADVANCES
By Melinda Waldrop
Managing Editor
T
he technology Eric Pflueger witnessed firsthand this past
December has been more than a decade in the making.
Eric Pflueger, sales manager, agriculture market
sector for Premier Tech Systems and Automation, attended
The Almond Conference in Sacramento, California, Dec. 5-7.
There, he saw innovation he began championing years ago
at work.
Premier Tech's PRAIRIE SCP-2100 robotic nut sorting machine
drew quite a crowd, Pflueger said. The artificial intelligenceassisted
machine, which can process up to 5,000 pounds per
hour, removes defects from nuts including almonds and pecans,
and sorts the product into multiple streams.
" Whenever we ran the piece of equipment, our booth
couldn't have been more busy, " Pflueger told Produce
Processing. " It's fun to watch. The robots move. That's
relatively new to people in this industry. They've seen big
robots putting boxes on the pallet, but we've never seen
them really do this. Most robots are told to do something:
'Move the box over there,' and it puts it down over there.
Somebody programs that in, and the robot makes that same
movement back and forth, all the time.
" These are often operating live, meaning it gets an image
and it's told where to go to get it. "
The machine also represents AI advances that Pflueger sees
as the tip of a technology iceberg.
" The reason is the data we collect, " he said. " You don't
know what questions to ask just yet because it is new. We get
so much data, we don't really know how the customer wants
to use all of that yet. "
The robotic nut sorting machine is just one example of
new tech aimed at making start-of-line processes and overall
production line functions faster, less expensive and safer.
10 JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2 024
The PRAIRIE SCP2100's
ability to
separate product into
three streams saves
customers a nickel a
pound and reduces the
need to re-process.
Photos courtesy of
Premier Tech Systems
and Automation.

January/February 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January/February 2024

The Process
Keeping it fresh
Machine evolution
From farm to can
Advantages of AI
PMMI
Industry Insider
Upcoming Events
Right Now On
Advertiser Index
January/February 2024 - 1
January/February 2024 - 2
January/February 2024 - 3
January/February 2024 - The Process
January/February 2024 - 5
January/February 2024 - Keeping it fresh
January/February 2024 - 7
January/February 2024 - 8
January/February 2024 - 9
January/February 2024 - Machine evolution
January/February 2024 - 11
January/February 2024 - 12
January/February 2024 - 13
January/February 2024 - From farm to can
January/February 2024 - 15
January/February 2024 - 16
January/February 2024 - 17
January/February 2024 - 18
January/February 2024 - 19
January/February 2024 - Advantages of AI
January/February 2024 - 21
January/February 2024 - 22
January/February 2024 - 23
January/February 2024 - PMMI
January/February 2024 - 25
January/February 2024 - 26
January/February 2024 - Advertiser Index
January/February 2024 - 28
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