The software behind a new generation of food processing

Our consultant Henk's story

My customer is developing a waterjet-based cutting robot, for cutting meat and fish. They already had knife-based cutting machines, but these can only make perpendicular straight cuts. In many cases, freeform cuts provide a better yield, and offer more flexibility. Their customers deliver uniform products to supermarkets and to the big food companies like McDonald’s and KFC.

In 2019, I started my project at this company to strengthen the software team, taking up development and architect roles. The team is now composed of 6 people. I still combine software development with the guidance of my colleagues.

The software is mainly written in C#. Microsoft Visual Studio is our main development environment. For everything, we use the object oriented software development approach, and the MVVM design pattern for linking the backend logic with the user interface.

We control every movement of the machine, so we have to work in close cooperation with the mechanics department, in order to optimize both speed and precision.

As a relatively new player in this market, we maintain close contact with customers to ensure our solutions meet their evolving needs.

Since two years, we have machines in the field. Our customers are convinced of its added value, and they are regularly requesting new features. Our current challenge is to fulfill these requests as good as possible, while keeping everything stable.

It’s nice to see that the software decisions we made early in the project are paying off, and provide the flexibility that we now need.