Land O'Frost Reduces Daily Labor Expenses by 20% While Upskilling Its Workforce with Formic Robots

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Formic, a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) automation provider for U.S. manufacturers, deployed five gantry-style palletizing robots at Land O’Frost’s Lansing, Illinois, manufacturing facility, saving them 20% on labor-related OpEx daily and transitioning employees from manually stacking boxes onto pallets to being robot operators. Formic’s Full Service Palletizer Rental program optimized end-of-line production, increasing safety and production while bolstering employee skills from day one.

Land O’Frost’s key drivers for adding production line automation with Formic were improving employee safety, speeding changeovers in production, and eliminating repetitive SKU packing pattern training. The company runs multiple SKUs, resulting in a new pallet pattern with every product changeover. On the production floor, this required continual retraining — taking away valuable time from floor operators that could have been spent on productivity-increasing tasks for the business.

“When I saw the opportunity for automation to eliminate repetitive production line tasks while simultaneously improving our employees’ lives, it was an easy decision,” said Frank Mejia, Continuous Improvement Supervisor at Land O’Frost. “Formic made the entire deployment process simple. They took care of everything, from training our team on the machines to handling all future maintenance.”

Formic deployed all five systems over two weekends while production ran unhindered, programmed pallet patterns for all SKUs, and trained all floor operators on the robotic systems. Since deployment, Land O’Frost has realized a 20% savings on labor-related OpEx daily, while reducing the changeover process from lengthy discussions between employees to a few clicks on a touchscreen.

“Land O’Frost has always focused on finding new ways to innovate their production processes, which is how they’ve continually grown since their founding in the 1940s,” said Saman Farid, Formic’s Founder and CEO. “By adding our palletizing solutions to their production line, they’ve eliminated unnecessary downtime, upskilled employees to robot operators, and reduced overall OpEx spend. Automation was the final missing piece in driving their production efficiency even further.”

Formic’s Full Service Palletizer Rental program includes access to four fully supported turnkey palletizing solutions for the same fixed monthly or annual rate. The program also includes 24/7 technical support, 100% preventative and corrective maintenance coverage, contracted performance rates, equipment swapping at no extra cost, and lead times of 10 weeks or less.

On April 30th, Land O’Frost will host a Formic Automation Community event at their Illinois facility to showcase how our robotic solutions are supporting the production of 128,000 pounds of meat daily.