MHD WAREHOUSING
THE BEST WAY TO CLEAN A BISCUIT FACTORY 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.
By adding an Avidbots Neo to its cleaning team, Green’s Biscuits has freed up workers to focus on other duties.
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reen’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-consumergoods 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 58 | MHD AUGUST 2021
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