5/8/2020 Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks - WSJ
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/meatpackers-covid-safety-automation-robots-coronavirus-11594303535 Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks The pandemic is speeding meatpackers’ shift from human meat cutters to automated ones, but machines can’t yet match people’s ability
By Jacob Bunge and Jesse Newman July 9, 2020 10 08 am ET
Listen to this article 14 Minutes
SPRINGDALE, Ark.––Deboning livestock and slicing up chickens has long been hands-on labor. Low-paid workers using knives and saws work on carcasses moving steadily down production lines. It is labor-intensive and dangerous work.
Those factory floors have been especially conducive to spreading coronavirus. In April and May, more than 17,300 meat and poultry processing workers in 29 states were infected and 91 died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Plant shutdowns reduced U.S. beef and pork production by more than one-third in late April.
Meatpackers in response spent hundreds of millions of dollars on safety equipment such as personal protective gear, thermal scanners and workplace partitions, and they boosted workers’ pay to encourage them to stay on the job.
They also are searching for a longer-term solution. That quest is playing out in a former truck-maintenance shop near the Springdale, Ark., headquarters of meatpacking giant
Tyson Foods Inc. TSN -0.68% ▲ There, company engineers and scientists are pushing into robotics, a development the industry has been slow to embrace and has struggled to adopt.
The team, including designers who once worked in the auto industry, are developing an automated deboning system destined to handle some of the roughly 39 million chickens slaughtered, plucked and sliced up each week in Tyson plants. https://www.wsj.com/articles/meatpackers-covid-safety-automation-robots-coronavirus-11594303535 1/11 5/8/2020 Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks - WSJ Tyson, the biggest U.S. meat company by sales, currently relies on about 122,000 employees to churn out about 1 in every 5 pounds of chicken, beef and pork produced in the country. The work at Tyson’s Manufacturing Automation Center, which opened in August 2019, is speeding the shift from human meat cutters to robotic butchers.
Over the past three years, Tyson has invested about $500 million in technology and automation. Chief Executive Noel White said those efforts likely would increase in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a debacle for the $213 billion U.S. meat industry. For the first time in memory for some Americans, there wasn’t enough meat to go around. Reduced production forced grocery giants such as Kroger Co., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Albertsons Cos. to limit how much fresh meat shoppers could buy in some stores. Fast- food chain Wendy’s had to tell customers that some restaurants couldn’t serve hamburgers.
Now automation projects are racing ahead, said Decker Walker, a managing director with Boston Consulting Group, or BCG, who works with meatpackers. “Everybody’s thinking about it, and it’s going to increase,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/meatpackers-covid-safety-automation-robots-coronavirus-11594303535 2/11 5/8/2020 Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks - WSJ Close Quarters Worker density in meat processing plants is higher than in many other industries.
Estimated employees per 1,000 square feet of manufacturing space