Before donning its tinfoil wrapper, Hershey’s Kisses need robotics to make customers’ chocolate dreams come true.
“We have four manufacturing lines running 15,000 Kisses per minute,” said Scott Fedor, the senior director of engineering packaging systems control at Hershey. “So think about how you have to wrap that many Kisses per minute. You need high-speed, high-tech equipment.”
Mr. Fedor spoke on a panel at the two-day Food Processing & Packaging Robotics Summit that started Monday at the Wyndham Grand Downtown hotel.
The crowd, a mix of roboticists, startup founders and food industry experts, gasped and laughed at the magnitude of Kisses-a-minute. (The West Hershey plant in Dauphin County says it produces more than 70 million Kisses a day).
To Mr. Fedor’s right sat Shavonne Stupart,