Call me crazy but I still think manual grading beats those automated lines

Last week at the Williamsburg packing shed I had to pick between running our new optical sorter or sticking with the hand sort table for a big Honeycrisp order. I went with the manual crew because that machine still can't catch subtle bruising the way Frank with 15 years experience does. We finished 20 bins in 4 hours and the buyer at Kroger said our cull rate was the lowest he'd seen this season. Has anyone else found the robots just can't replace a good set of eyes?

2 comments

2 Comments

brians2714d ago

Happened to me too with our Zestars last fall. That machine flagged a whole bin for "soft spots" that turned out to be nothing but pollen stains after Frank took a look at them.

lily57414d ago

Oh wow, that's actually a really good point about the subtle bruising! Here's something I haven't seen anyone mention though - have you noticed that running both systems together can actually hurt quality? Last season we tried keeping the optical sorter as a backup on our Gala line and it kept kicking out perfectly good apples with tiny scuff marks while letting through the ones with internal damage that looked fine on the outside. The machine just can't tell the difference between a scratch on the peel and actual bruising underneath. Ended up costing us more in re-sorting than we saved on labor.