CIFT Assists Honeybaked Ham with Automation

Harry J. Hoenselaar opened the first Honeybaked store in Detroit in 1957.  Using the highest quality bone-in smoked ham, Harry created a special curing and cooking procedure, and that, combined with a patented spiral-slicing process, made Honey Baked Ham® the easy-to-serve centerpiece, and an instant staple at holiday dinners and special meals throughout the year. Today, the Hoenselaar family remains with the company, and so has the commitment to make every ham the same way Harry did - one at a time. 

The Honeybaked Ham Company facility located in Holland, Ohio was facing labor shortage issues. To solve this problem, the company needed to improve its operation. CIFT, part of the Ohio MEP and the MEP National Network™, met with the company, conducted a walk-through assessment, and determined that automation was needed, in the form of a robotic palletizing system.  

CIFT brought in a mechanical, electrical, controls engineering services company and a software development company to design a palletizer specifically for this Honeybaked Ham facility. The state-of-the-art system that was designed would palletize products from one line, using two shifts per day. The work was previously completed by 3 employees, but the investment in this system would allow those employees to be used in other, more difficult jobs that couldn't easily be handled with a robot. The ROI on the investment for the company took only eight months.