See more, shoot better

Sorting is 99,9% accurate. So, what next? Tomra has its eyes on product quality and ease of use. Axel Breuer talked to Tomra’s Thomas Molnar on the Almond Conference.

I see you brought a new machine to the Conference.

Thomas Molnar: Today we are launching the next generation of Nimbus BSI technology. We simply call it the Nimbus BSI+. We extended and upgraded the features of the last model. The main feature is a new sensor. It combines visible light and near-infrared. We were looking at a quite limited band of wavelengths until now. Now we can see much more. You do not have to choose which spectrum you want to use anymore. It is combined. The machines give our clients a stronger tool to detect insect bites for example, enhanced foreign material detection – and doubles. In the past, it was very difficult to detect doubles, which we can detect with the oil content. The broader spectrum of wavelength gives you more options for detection. What can you find what you could not find in the past? For foreign material, we are already in the 99.9% range. But it will give you an extra bit of perfection for foreign material. But we focused on insect bites and insect damage, especially here in California. We were not able to do that in a consistent way in the past. The detection of insect bites used to be between 25 and 50%. We are now in a range of 80-90% for insect damage. Depending on where you put the machine in the process you can also look for chip and scratch. While the main focus was on foreign material we have more options to look at product quality – with a similar setup. Now we can use the machine in different steps of the process.

How do you fine-tune the characteristics of quality control?

Thomas Molnar: You can define here how aggressive you want to be. For foreign material, it is black and white. You simply do not want any foreign material. For product quality, you can define how aggressive you want to be about product size, insect damage, chip and scratch, how much white meat you want to see.

Do you have other new features?

Thomas Molnar: We changed the chute. It is all about hygienic standards, uptime, shortening maintenance time. We created a little window on the side of the chute in the frame that allows you to watch the product flow in the air, in the chute. And you can also directly clean the chute inside. We went much smaller on the ejector size. You cannot really get smaller. Where we used to be at 10 millimeters distance of air valves. We are now down to 4.6 millimeters, which currently is the smallest we can go. With a smaller distance, you can sort faster and more precise. The user interface has been improved dramatically. In the past, you had to have an expert user from the customer or from Tomra to make changes. With the BSI+ you have a one-click classifier. It is very easy now to make the changes. We can teach the machine what you want to sort out. If you look at the competition the Nimbus technology is very broad and complex – making the right settings could be very difficult. The new user interface and the ease of use is a clear game changer.

Please let us know more details about the new ease of use.

Thomas Molnar: The quality manager can now scan the samples and he gets an image of the samples. We are talking about a very broad spectrum, far wider than the human eye can see. As a quality manager or an operator, you can really select what you see on the image and define for yourself what you consider quality A, B or C. Then you tell the machine to create a classifier for you, give it a name – for example Nonpareil Class A, you save it. You do not need big samples, just about 100 to 200g. That is how you can make your recipes for your process. In the past you really needed an expert who understands all the complex characteristics or an engineer from Tomra to sit down with your quality manager. You had to teach the machine about the slightest changes that you were getting. Now you can classify the slightest changes on the spot, on the machine with a visual reference.

Can the machine communicate with the rest of the processing line?

Thomas Molnar: Today we are communicating on a recipe level. If there are skater or MES systems you can communicate on a recipe level. You can push the various qualities in your skater or MES system or the other way around. You have to do that manually. But we are working on ways how the machine can do this automatically. But you still have to teach the machine what is good and what is bad.

Everybody talks about AI and self-learning. Where does your company stand?

Thomas Molnar: There is still room for improvement. The machine is currently collecting all the data during the sorting process. You have to imagine that we are currently sorting 8,000 pieces per second. You have to sort and analyze this data – and that is something that we are looking into. We have to figure out what we can learn with all the data that is coming out of the machine.

While it seems far-fetched people are starting to talk about IoT-safety. How safe are your machines now?

Thomas Molnar: Our machines have an option to communicate via VPN but that is all up to the customer. We realized that we have to work with the bigger players like Microsoft to assure IoT safety. Until now the customers have been skeptical even to integrate the sorters into their system – and having access to the machine from the outside and they stopped that. It was an issue for that because the remote access feature is part of all our machines. It would make our job easier to have access to the machine to check the status. We are in a formidable position. With the acquisition of Compac we have secured our place in that segment. We are the only player that covers bulk and lane across those segments. We have good cash reserves and we are constantly looking at companies that would be a strategic fit. We are seeing a growth rate that is just above industry standards and we are working on a number of platforms for the years to come.