RBCobots set to help satisfy the danish food demand at FKI | Uniwelco

It's bright rooms and high ceilings which greets us, when we arrive at FKI Fast Food Teknik. Søren Bøjesen, who is factory manager, greets us to show us around and tell us about their progress with RBCobots. We are joined by Mads, who is team leader and works with an RBCobot daily.

The name of FKI has been around for more than 50 years, but its current shape only dates back to 1991 and is located in Verninge close to Tommerup on Fyn. Today, the company is a driving force on the Northern European market of frying and boiling equipment, toasters as well as serving tool for the fast food industry. Additionally, FKI is represented in multiple European countries, and works together with many highly qualified and dedicated distributors around the world.

Today, there is 30 employees in the company and they are market-leading on the Danish market with an export share of 70-80%. For example, FKI has manufactured machines specifically for the Circle K gas stations all over the Denmark, so that the danes can satisfy their hunger in hot dogs in an effective and inviting way.

Optimization of processes

In order to be able to keep up with increasing demand within the fast food segment, FKI has been working with Lean for many year. 

Part of the Lean journey, was to visualise the production processes and create a better overview through the processes. In the welding apartment, they have determined, that all employees should be able to weld all products. This has removed all unwanted bottle necks, increased the companies delivery capacity, as well as created greater employee satisfaction compared to earlier, where every employee only welded select products. For Søren Bøjesen, the increased flexibility is going to be a vital element to maintain and strengthen in the company:

"We thrive off of flexibility when it comes to products and delivery times. We have to be able to deliver faster than our competitors. The process has become much more dynamic. This requires that everybody has an idea of what needs to be done, and that no one is locked in specific products and processes."

It strengthens cooperation and relations between employees, that they can access work across different products. FKI has a well-established reputation of long seniority amongst employees. Both Søren and Mads agree that exactly flexibility in the work increases employee satisfaction, which is beneficial to employee retention as well as attracting new workers at FKI.

When it comes to apprentices this approach has also been good, because you train higher skilled metal workers at FKI, as they get to work across the many different processes. FKI has experienced, that multiple eyes on the products improves product quality. Compared to previously, workers now openly discuss how to get the best welding results across products - and in that regard multiple heads are always better than one.

A new loyal employee

As a part of the optimization process FKI bought an RBCobot back in 2019. Acording to Søren Bøjesen there was a multitude of reasons to the time being right for investing in another robot:

"The robot gives us a chance to develop our business further. First of all, it's obvious that the quality of the robotic welding is better, than what is possible manually. It opens up for welding parts of our products, which we were previously unable to weld, because of the strict hygienic requirements in the food industry. Additionally, the yearly growth in revenue means, that we continually have to increase our capacity and effectivity. We expect, that the increased output in the welding  department partially is going to happen because of the robot," Søren says and continues:

"At the same time, we often purchase welding tasks from subcontractors, where the delivery time is often long. With the robot, we will now be able to produce some of these products in a significantly shorter amount of time, which supports our strategy of continuously improving FKI's delivery capacity. We are also working towards the robot solving some of our more trivial welding tasks which requires less-than-ideal working postures. In this way the robot will also improve ergonomics in the welding department. Finally it's simply exciting to get our hands on new technology - it sparks new ideas and gives us more energy for other tasks."

After multiple years of searching for a robot technology that was suitable for FKI, the  decision came down to an RBCobot. It was the URCap's user friendliness and the robots size, which made the RBCobot and FKI a great match:

"It was surprisingly easy to get started with the robot. It is a very user friendly interface. Both the URCap, but also the UR as a whole is a very clever concept and it's a very adaptive solution. Compared to some of the first robots we came across, RBCobot is in a much more unique and user friendly league. The first few robots we looked at, required much more space and were not as easy to work with as well as harder to program. It is a major advantage of RBCobots, that we don't have to put up a lot of expensive and troublesome safety equipment around. Safety is build into the machine and that means that it takes up less space than traditional robots, which is a clear advantage for us."

The employees at FKI have welcomed the robot with a positive attitude. It was important for both Søren and Mads, that the robot could contribute positively to everybody in the company - while not creating any type of fear, that it would steal their jobs.

"Our idea of a robot has always been, that it would contribute to an increased output, while making us able to in-source some of the hardest tasks, which have previously had long delivery time frames. So it's not because the robot is going to replace a worker - it's supposed to be an assistance in the daily production. We have always had a positive outlook on it, and that means that the coworkers are motivated to work alongside it."

The positive attitude towards the robot has been affected by the fact, that it has already solved some of the more ergonomically challenging and trivial tasks for the workers. When the first RBCobot is fully integrated in the workflow, more robots might be to come, says Søren Bøjesen.