Author：Chih-Wei Chen / Senior Technical Specialist, Livestock Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan
Author：Wan-Ling Tsai / Assistant, Livestock Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Dawushan Farm Technology, located in Pingtung, is the largest domestic producer of washed eggs. The company supplies nearly 400,000 eggs daily to chain retailers and wholesalers. Their egg laying farms have adopted automatic feeding and egg collection systems from overseas that utilize conveyor belts to directly transport eggs from poultry farms to washing and selection plants, where they are cleaned, graded, and packaged into egg cartons. The subsequent packaging (egg boxes, baskets), size, stacking method, and pallets for shipping differ based on the individual logistics systems of downstream channels. Plant workers must familiarize themselves with the packaging and shipping methods of a wide range of products in addition to transporting boxes or baskets of eggs to their designated pallets. This labor intensive and repetitive task is likely to result in work injuries due to the significant weight of the eggs.

Thus, a Flexible Egg Transport System was introduced. It integrates RFID tags to automatically recognize the chain retailers and wholesalers for various products. As such, workers are only required to pack and seal boxes (baskets) then transport them to a conveyor belt, where the system automatically separates and weighs products to confirm that the weights are correct. A robotic arm then transports the eggs to their designated pallet, with each box taking only an average of 15 seconds to move. The Flexible Transport System can simultaneously stack 3 types of products and complete transport of up to 210 boxes per hour. This significantly decreases potential work injuries due to labor intensive and repetitive tasks, reducing transport labor by 710 hours per year and increasing output value by NT$219 million due to improved efficiency.