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Robots in the kitchen

A pizza for seventy kronor, and the ingredients stay the same

The saving has to come from a machine you can name. Take it out of the ingredients or out of somebody's wage and you have won a quarter and lost the restaurant.

What a kitchen robot actually is

Almost none of it looks like a robot. A kitchen that runs on machines is a row of single purpose stations that each do one thing the same way every time, joined by something that moves food between them. The arm with a gripper on it, the thing everybody pictures, turns up in maybe one station out of five, and usually the wrong one.

That matters for what it costs. A general purpose arm is expensive, slow, and has to be taught. A dough divider is cheap, fast and stupid, and it will still be dividing dough in nine years. Most of the money in a kitchen line is saved by the stupid machines.

We read the record before any of it is bought. The patents on dough handling, hygienic design and conveyor ovens are thick, old and mostly expired, which is good news: what expired is free to use, and what is still live tells you which corner of the problem somebody already paid to solve.

The arithmetic

Where the sixty kronor come from

A worked model on ordinary Swedish restaurant economics, not a measurement from a specific kitchen. The point is which line moves and which one must not.

LineBy handWith machinesWhy
Ingredients34 kr34 krUntouched. This is the line we refuse to move
Preparation26 kr8 krDivider and sheeter, running while nobody watches
Cooking22 kr9 krOne oven at temperature all day instead of four starts
Service24 kr8 krThe order goes to the line, not through a person
Waste11 kr4 krPortioning to the gram instead of to the eye
Other13 kr7 krRent and power per pizza fall when the line runs longer
Total130 kr70 krSixty kronor, none of it out of the food

The ingredient line is the whole test. If it had fallen the saving would be coming out of the food, and a cheaper pizza made of cheaper flour is not an achievement.

A production line of five stations with the handovers marked below it A conveyor runs left to right past five stations named dough, sauce, topping, oven and box. The oven is drawn heavier than the others and a glowing line rises from it to a blinking point marked one hundred and eighty seconds. Below the conveyor a violet line joins four points, one between each pair of stations, labelled handover, where a line actually stops. A measurement line spans the whole run. DOUGH SAUCE TOPPING OVEN BOX 180 s HANDOVER . WHERE A LINE ACTUALLY STOPS FIVE STATIONS . ONE TAKT
Automation i ett storkök
Sorting on a food line. The crates are the handover, and the handover is what somebody has to stand next to.

The line

A line stops in the handover, not in the station

Every station in a kitchen line works. They are sold as working machines and they arrive working. What fails is the twenty centimetres between two of them, where one machine puts something down and the next has to find it.

So the first week is spent on the handovers and not on the stations. How much the position is allowed to drift, what happens to the piece that arrives turned, and who stops the line when the third one in a row arrives wrong.

The stations

Five stations, and what each one is

  1. Dough

    Divider, proofer, sheeter. Mechanical, cheap, and the one part where time cannot be bought back.

  2. Sauce

    A metered pump. The tolerance is grams, and grams are what waste is made of.

  3. Topping

    The hardest station, because cheese and rocket do not behave like screws. Usually a doser, rarely a gripper.

  4. Oven

    The only station with real heat, and therefore the one that sets the pace for all the others.

  5. Box

    Fold, close, label. Cheap to automate and the first thing everybody tries, which is usually the wrong order.

Two surfaces in section, one cleanable and one not, above a four step wash cycle On the left a surface curves into its walls with a radius marked greater than six millimetres, labelled cleanable. On the right a surface meets its wall in a square corner where two violet points sit, labelled corner and not. Below, four boxes named rinse, foam, dwell and rinse run left to right, with a glowing line rising from the third to a blinking point marked twelve minutes. CLEANABLE NOT CORNER R > 6 mm RINSE FOAM DWELL RINSE 12 min THE WASH DECIDES THE SHAPE, NOT THE OTHER WAY

Hygiene

The wash decides the shape, and it decides it first

A food machine is designed around how it gets cleaned, and everything else follows from that. An inside corner that a brush cannot reach is not a detail to fix later, it is a machine that fails an inspection.

That is why the drawings start with radii and drainage and not with the mechanism. Every surface that touches food gets a radius a brush can follow, every cavity gets somewhere for water to leave, and every fastener that could hold a crumb gets designed out.

The wash cycle also costs time every single day. A line that needs forty minutes of cleaning has forty fewer minutes of selling, and that shows up in the cost per plate long before anything breaks.

Two columns of cost bars where the ingredient row is identical in both Six named cost rows are drawn twice, once under by hand and once under with machines. Every row is shorter in the second column except the first, ingredients, which is exactly the same length in both and joined across by a violet line. Under the columns stand the words the ingredient line does not move, and below that one hundred and thirty kronor to seventy, a worked model. BY HAND WITH MACHINES INGREDIENTS PREP COOK SERVICE WASTE OTHER THE INGREDIENT LINE DOES NOT MOVE 130 kr -> 70 kr . A WORKED MODEL

The money

Where the difference actually comes from

Read the table again and watch which bars shrink. Preparation and service fall hardest, because those are the hours where somebody stands and repeats a motion. Cooking falls because one oven held at temperature beats four cold starts. Waste falls because a doser counts and an eye estimates.

None of it comes out of the ingredients, and none of it comes out of a wage rate. What it does come out of is head count per plate, and that is worth saying plainly rather than hiding: the same team serves more covers, or the same covers need fewer hands. Which of those two it becomes is the owner's decision and not the machine's.

Three kitchens

The same method, three different answers

What the machine has to do changes completely with what is being made. Each of these has its own page.

A dough line drawn as divider, proofer and sheeter with the times marked On the left a hopper drops portions of dough marked two hundred and sixty grams. In the middle a proofing cabinet holds twelve dough balls in three rows, each row larger than the one above, marked proof twenty four hours. On the right two rollers flatten the dough into a sheet marked four millimetres. Along the bottom a blue curve rises and falls under the words time is the ingredient nobody can shorten. 260 g PROOF . 24 h 4 mm TIME IS THE INGREDIENT NOBODY CAN SHORTEN DIVIDER . PROOFER . SHEETER

Pizza

Dough is time and heat, and neither can be hurried. The oven sets the pace and everything upstream has to match it.

Dough and oven
A clamshell griddle in section with the core temperature curve below Two heated plates are drawn in section, the upper one lowered onto the lower. Nine short lines mark the ridges on each plate and a glowing line runs between them. A violet ellipse between the plates is the patty, with a blinking point at its centre. Below, a blue curve rises through three measured points to a dashed limit line marked seventy degrees, under the words core temperature is the only done. CLOSED 70 C CORE TEMPERATURE IS THE ONLY DONE CONTACT ON BOTH SIDES HALVES THE TIME

Burgers

Contact on both sides and a core temperature that is not negotiable. The assembly is where the tolerances add up.

Grill and assembly
Three dosing hoppers over a bowl, with the soft filling marked separately Three hoppers stand in a row, each with a chute below it and a violet ellipse showing how much it drops, marked in grams. The rightmost is drawn heavier than the other two. Under them a bowl is drawn in section with a measurement across it reading two hundred and twenty millimetres, one hand. To the right a soft folded shape is outlined in violet and marked soft. 68 g 44 g 80 g 220 mm . ONE HAND SOFT PORTION . FILL . FOLD WHAT A GRIPPER CANNOT DO, A DOSER CAN

Tacos and bowls

Portioning soft things that a gripper cannot hold. A doser can do what a claw cannot.

Portion and fill

Faster than a person, and that is the smaller half

A machine that makes a pizza in ninety seconds is not interesting because it is quick. It is interesting because it makes the four hundredth one the same way as the first, at eleven at night, with a queue outside.

Consistency is what people come back for, and it is the thing a tired kitchen loses first. That is the part worth buying.

Or write here

Three fields, and a person reads it

Name, an address we can answer to, and what you are trying to build. You get a reference back straight away.

We use this to answer you and, where it fits, to prepare a scope. The lawful basis is steps taken at your own request before a contract. It is stored on our own server in the European Union, never passed to anyone, and deleted after twelve months if it does not become an engagement. The full notice is on the legal page.

A production line of five stations with the handovers marked below it A conveyor runs left to right past five stations named dough, sauce, topping, oven and box. The oven is drawn heavier than the others and a glowing line rises from it to a blinking point marked one hundred and eighty seconds. Below the conveyor a violet line joins four points, one between each pair of stations, labelled handover, where a line actually stops. A measurement line spans the whole run. DOUGH SAUCE TOPPING OVEN BOX 180 s HANDOVER . WHERE A LINE ACTUALLY STOPS FIVE STATIONS . ONE TAKT

What does your line make?

Tell us the dish and the volume and we will read the record for it before anybody quotes you a machine.

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