SPECIAL STORY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE November 2022 69 maintenance, receiving, and feed the robot while it works. Your rebuttal: But automation takes money! Yes. It does. Money well spent. The mill now makes 700 tons daily with a proud record of just over 900. The hours per day are down slightly to 12 to 14 hours using an overlapping shift. A good estimate is that they spent $600,000 to $750,000 on the upgrades. And eliminated 4 salaries while increasing tons. You can probably calculate the ROI. By the way, this all kicked off with a good mill evaluation. Thanks for reading, see you next time! About Wayne Cooper Wayne Cooper operated and supervised feed mills in Iowa for 23 years before taking on the job of Director of Feed Technology for the Cherkizovo Group, Russia’s largest feed manufacturer. This production had an extreme focus on pelleting as every ton from all seven mills was pelleted. Those years allowed him to see an international version of the feed industry and the technology on both sides of the Atlantic. His problem solving experience is now used to optimize feed mill production for the clients of Anderson Feed Technology.
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