Automation blueprint

The inspiration for the newest plant was taken from technology Vlado and his sons saw being implemented at facilities in other countries and combining the best of them to manufacture its products. They endeavored to combine the techniques and art of creating dry-cured meats Italy, France and Switzerland use with the best of the technology utilized in Europe. The automation technology behind the drying of raw pork as well as the chopping, blending and stuffing of the salame products as well as transporting products throughout the six-to-eight-week aging process is almost exclusively facilitated by equipment suppliers based in Italy. The same is true of the robotics and automation used to carefully create Daniele’s prosciutto. While there are plants in Spain where production of 1 million hams per year is the norm, the level of automation and the use of robotics doesn’t hold a candle to Daniele.

“What our forefathers did by hand, we’re doing with machines,” Stefano says.

Currently seven robots zig-zag across the expansive new plant, rotating product and moving it in and out of the different drying and curing areas of the plant. Stefano admits that implementing automation is an example of addressing the labor shortage most processors face, but he doesn’t see the technology as a threat to employment.

“It’s not that you’re taking somebody’s job, it’s that nobody’s showing up for the job, particularly for the menial tasks,” such as pushing the giant racks of hams and salame to and from different drying and aging rooms. “Thank goodness we have robots pushing around the racks because that was a thankless job,” he says. “I prefer to hire better skilled people, better paid people and fewer people. Technology helps us afford that.”

“Before we used to have guys putting meat on wagons; guys putting meat on the conveyors; a lot of manual, very physical work,” Stefano says, and filling those positions was difficult. “It was getting nearly impossible, so automation helps for many of those positions.”