How Cobots Can Benefit Cheese Plants: Packing and Palletizing

How can cobots for cheese plants help?

Cobots for cheese plants earn their place at the end of the line, where packing and palletizing pull people into the same motions shift after shift. A collaborative robot arm can pick finished packs or cases, place them in a set pattern on a pallet, and keep working beside the staff who run the line. It does not replace the whole line. It takes the most repetitive steps so the people on the floor can focus on what needs their judgment.

The main benefit is coverage. Packing and palletizing are hard to keep filled because the work is physically repetitive, often lands on the least popular shifts, and wears people down over time. A cobot holds the stacking pace on those steps, which lets a smaller team keep the line moving without running short on the hardest position.

This does not mean zero staff. The realistic picture is a robot plus a smaller team, with people handling changeovers, label and quality checks, pallet swaps and the upkeep the arm needs. That division of labor is where the value shows up, and it frames the rest of this page.

What problem do cheese plants face with packing and palletizing today?

Cheese plants are fewer than they were. According to Cheese Reporter, the 2024 count of U.S. cheese plants is the smallest since 2009, when there were 495 plants. Plant numbers reached a 21st century high of 565 in both 2017 and 2018. The plants still running must staff every shift, including the packing and palletizing positions that are hardest to keep filled.

Labor is the bigger constraint. According to Dairy Foods, citing a 2021 Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute report, 77 percent of surveyed U.S. manufacturers expected ongoing difficulties finding workers. That covers manufacturing broadly, not cheese plants specifically, so read it as the market you are hiring into rather than a measure of your own plant.

Turnover makes the gap wider. A 2019 FARM Program labor survey found an average dairy turnover rate of 38.8 percent, according to Bullvine. Canadian dairy voluntary turnover was 9 percent in 2023, against 14 percent across agriculture, according to the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. Those figures describe dairy farms and Canadian dairy, not U.S. cheese plants, but they show how unstable dairy labor has been. Every vacancy on the packing room floor is absorbed through overtime, slower runs and retraining hours.

What are the main benefits for a cheese plant?

The first benefit is steadier staffing on the hardest positions. A cobot does not call out sick, and it runs the same stacking pattern on the last shift as on the first. That gives you a fixed part of the line you can plan around while open roles stay open.

The second is less repetitive strain on people. According to Food Engineering, a June 2025 product release from a palletizing vendor says cobot palletizing helps manufacturers raise throughput, reduce ergonomic risk and keep uptime with lean staffing. That is a vendor claim, so test it against your own line, but the ergonomic point matches the work itself, which asks the same motion of the same people all shift.

The third is redeployment. Staff freed from stacking can move to changeovers, sanitation checks and quality work, which need experience and judgment. A consistent pallet pattern also gives the warehouse and the dock the same load shape every time, which makes downstream handling simpler.

How does the robot work day to day at packing and palletizing?

The cobot mounts at or beside the packing table. Finished packs or cases arrive on the conveyor, the arm picks them up, and it places them on a pallet in the pattern your team sets at the start of the run. When the pallet reaches its set height, the arm signals staff, who swap in an empty pallet and send the full one to staging.

Staff set the product recipes, check the first pallets of each run, and clear the occasional jam or misfeed. According to Robotics Tomorrow, traditional palletizing robots need safety fencing, which can rule them out in tight plants, while a cobot can fit where fencing does not. That fit is often the deciding factor in a crowded cheese room.

Changing products takes setup, because the pattern and gripper must match each pack type. Build that time into the run plan rather than treating it as a surprise halfway through a shift.

Which areas of a cheese plant does the robot work in?

A cobot works best in a few areas that share one trait: repetitive handling at the end of the line. The six areas below are the usual footprint. The site assessment confirms which of them your plant can use, and which stay with people. The packing table and the palletizing cell hold most of the repetitive motion, so they are usually the first areas we measure.

Each area needs its own pallet footprint, pattern and staging route. We map those on site, not from a drawing, so the arm stays clear of forklift lanes and foot traffic. The layout that comes out of that walk is what keeps the cell safe and the run moving.

How does the robot work alongside existing staff?

The robot covers the repetitive motion, and people cover everything around it. Operators load and unload staging, change pallets, feed film and labels, check product and date codes, and handle the exceptions the arm cannot judge. A robot plus a smaller team is the arrangement that keeps the line running, with fewer people locked into one motion.

Training matters more than most operators expect. Staff need to know how to start and stop the cell, clear a misfeed safely, change a recipe and read the alerts. We train the people who will run the cell at go-live, so that knowledge is not tied to one person who may be out on a given day.

What drives the savings?

The savings come from hours, not from a promised headcount cut. The hours that matter are the hours your team spends stacking and palletizing each shift and each week, plus the overtime, vacancy and retraining hours that come from gaps on those positions. Those hours are the baseline, and they differ from plant to plant.

This research did not turn up a verified hours range for cheese plant palletizing, so we will not give you one without measuring your line. The site assessment records current hours for each step, line speed and pattern changes per run. Any savings estimate should be built from those numbers, and the quote should show the assumptions behind it.

Count the recruiting, onboarding and covered-shift hours too. Those are often the largest share of the staffing gap, and they are the easiest hours to overlook when a line is short by only one or two people.

What can a cobot not do?

A cobot cannot make judgment calls. It does not judge whether a pack is underweight, a label is wrong, or a case looks off in a way a trained person would catch. Those checks stay with staff, and the layout should keep them close to the arm.

It is not a fix for an empty line. If product feeding the packing table is not steady, the arm waits too. Upstream issues, changeovers, sanitation and the physical limits of the arm remain yours to manage. The reach and payload of the arm must match your cases and pallets, and the assessment confirms that before any quote.

Cobots are not built to match a dedicated high-speed palletizer on very high volume lines, and the assessment will say plainly if a different machine is the better fit.

How do you get started?

Start with a free site assessment. We walk your packing and palletizing area, map the space, record the hours your team spends on each step, and check your pallet types, case sizes and sanitation routine. That gives us a basis for choosing the right robot for your site rather than the one we happen to have on hand.

Service Robot Co. is a US commercial robot integrator. We pick the robot, lease it through financing, deploy and integrate it on your line, train your staff and service it nationwide. The payment comes in the quote, which follows the site assessment, so you see the full picture before you decide anything.

Many operators begin with one leased unit on one line, run it through a few shifts, and expand only when the numbers hold. Bring the hours you recorded in the assessment to that decision, and we will work through the quote with you.