Homegrown biscuit manufacturing giant, Green’s Biscuits, has recently teamed up with Avidbots to transform its floor-cleaning operation. Janis Manship, Head of Quality for Green’s Biscuits, tells MHD how its new Avidbots’ Neo is improving safety and saving time.
Green’s Biscuits has been at the forefront of biscuit manufacturing in Australia for 35 years. As the biggest biscuit contract manufacturer in Australia, it sells to major retailers, blue chip fast-moving-consumer-goods customers, and the food services industry.
“We’re currently producing about 70 different products across seven different lines, with around 14 different packaging formats,” says Janis Manship, Head of Quality at Green’s Biscuits. “Whether it’s in a bag, or in a foil tray – we’ve got everything that anybody could want – and we are expanding across Australia and overseas. We are really serious about expanding Australian biscuit manufacturing.”
With two sites and roughly 18,000 square metres of real estate, cleaning efficiency and effectiveness is paramount – both for ensuring quality and safety as well as for keeping workers happy.
And that’s where Avidbots’ Neo, the fully autonomous floor scrubbing robot, comes in.
In January of this year, the Green’s shareholder introduced the company to Avidbots and its Neo autonomous cleaning robot. Previously, Green’s Carole Park operation in Queensland had been using labour intensive, manually operated floor scrubbers for cleaning. “But, having witnessed the success of the Neo at another operation, we knew there was a great opportunity for better results and reduced labour at Green’s by introducing a Neo,” Janis says.
“We were just quietly going about our business, without anything particularly fancy in the way of cleaning equipment, when this opportunity landed in our laps,” she adds. “It’s really made a huge difference to our deep cleaning team – improving the level and quality of cleaning across all of our warehouse, manufacturing, and packing areas.”
Green’s contacted Avidbots in late January, received its Neo three months later, and by the middle of May the team had been fully trained and was hitting 80 per cent of the robot’s potential utilisation.
Avidbots provided onsite training with the Neo, and Janis says they’ve been constantly in contact. “The Neo updates its programs overnight, so there’s no wasted time in terms of human labour – but when we have needed anything Avidbots have always been available and on-call to help,” she says. “The service they’ve provided is by far one of the best I’ve experienced in my 20-plus years in manufacturing. When you buy something there’s normally some hiccups with service or technical assistance, but not with Avidbots – they’ve been a great company to deal with.”
The Green’s team christened their Neo ‘Keanu’ – and he has seamlessly integrated into the Green’s family.
“Having an effective cleaning operation is essential on a site like ours to ensure proper hygiene and safety,” Janis says. “We have frequent visitors to our site, and auditors coming through on a monthly basis. Having Keanu there makes a real difference in terms of setting a good impression. Many of our visitors have commented that they’ve never seen anything like it – because it is pretty unique in biscuit and associated manufacturing industries.”
Janis says that biscuit manufacturing can easily lead to a dirty or dusty environment, and that before they introduced Keanu, 10 hours of human labour was used per week to clear away all the dirt, debris, and accumulated grime.
“Now, we just take Keanu to his starting point, choose the cleaning program, and off he goes – freeing up our other team members to focus on other deep cleaning duties,” she says. “He sends through an alarm to our mobile phones if there are any issues, or if he’s come to the end of his cycle.”
Keanu supplements the weekday and weekend cleaning operations, allowing human labour to be better deployed cleaning and maintaining the factory equipment. “The only time we have to spend on Keanu is when we need to empty him or change his water – but even that process is very quick after a bit of practice.”
In effect, Keanu does a job that previously took two people.
“We used to have one person on a ride-on cleaner – but that left a residue behind on the floors, so we would have to have another person following along to clean up after the cleaner,” Janis says. “Now all we need is one person to press go and set Keanu on his way.
“He has made such a good impression on everyone that’s come in,” she continues. “From a visitor’s perspective, it really makes us look innovative, and to auditors it signals that we are taking our cleaning and OH&S requirements very seriously.”
Beyond the time he saves workers on the floor, Keanu has found other ways to boost team morale. “Everyone is fascinated by Keanu,” Janis says. “The way Avidbots have designed him – he actually has a smile on his face. I learnt the other day that some of the ladies have taken to calling him ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’. He’s actually added a bit of joy to our workplace.”
Keanu has also saved Green’s on the use of cleaning chemicals – as the high-powered water flow doesn’t need anything else to get the job done. “We would prefer to not use chemicals in our operation, where we can. Keanu does such a phenomenal job with just water that we don’t need extra cleaning chemicals anymore – which is obviously a plus for the environment.”
Janis says that auditors visiting Green’s have been particularly impressed with Keanu. “Before it was a much more laborious process in terms of providing auditors with evidence on how we were doing things,” she says. “But last time the auditor came, it was a simple matter using Avidbots Command Center to bring up the charts and data from Keanu’s routines to show what had been cleaned, how it had been cleaned, and our water usage. Another excellent thing about the Neo is that it can actually take video of the entire cleaning process – so there is complete transparency as well as complete consistency. There’s no chance of falsification. The auditor was flabbergasted he was so impressed.”
“Instantly he could see we were being forward thinking about our hygiene protocols and took food safety and hygiene seriously. And that makes such a difference – those kinds of impressions really count.
“Keanu is our special name for him, but to the rest of the world he’s simply known as Neo,” Janis says. “Whether you decide to call your robot ‘Keanu’ or ‘Sadie’ or something else – the result is always a measurably clean floor.” ν
For Green’s Biscuits’ website, visit www.greensbiscuits.com.au
For more information on Avidbots, visit www.avidbots.com