Ken's Foods, the family-owned dressings and sauces producer with plants in Massachusetts, Georgia, Nevada, and Indiana, has overhauled its end-of-line packaging and palletizing operations by adopting an on-machine automation architecture built around Rockwell Automation PowerFlex 350 variable frequency drives — and the numbers are concrete: a 17% overall cost reduction compared to traditional centralized panel designs.
The shift moves VFDs off remote control cabinets and onto the production equipment itself, giving line technicians direct access to real-time current, voltage, and speed data without walking to a remote panel. For a food manufacturer running more than 400 SKUs across multiple facilities, that visibility improvement translates directly to faster fault diagnosis and reduced unplanned downtime on conveyor and palletizing lines. Operators in high-throughput prep-and-storage environments increasingly face the same bottleneck: legacy cabinet-based architecture that buries diagnostic data behind layers of wiring and panel access.
The 130-Drive Line
The centerpiece of the project is a 130-drive palletizing line equipped with a network-based safety architecture. According to Kyle Richard, vice president of business development for Elm Electrical — the electrical partner on the project — on-machine VFDs support a scalable safety system that allows electronic stops to be placed exactly where needed along the conveyors. "We estimate an overall cost savings of 17% compared to designing, building centralized panels and wiring directly to local motor disconnects, I/O points and motors," Richard said. "A network-based safety architecture reduces wiring and panel costs and allows electronic stops to be placed where they are needed along the conveyors."
Conveyor-mounted drives shorten wire runs significantly, and local disconnects, test points, and quick-connect power and I/O connections simplify lockout/tagout procedures — a meaningful compliance and safety benefit in a food-production environment subject to regular sanitation cycles. Technicians can isolate individual pieces of equipment without shutting down large sections of the line, a capability that matters when throughput is tied directly to order fulfillment for foodservice accounts.
A New Build Standard
Based on results from the initial deployment, Ken's Foods has established on-machine architecture as its standard for all future pallet-conveying system builds. Tony Stolo, project engineer at Ken's Foods, noted the practical upside: "It takes up less space, installs faster and is easier to maintain. It also gives us flexibility to expand or reconfigure as our operations evolve."
That standardization decision carries real supply-chain implications. As Ken's Foods adds or upgrades lines across its four facilities, the on-machine VFD specification simplifies commissioning and reduces the engineering hours required to integrate new conveyor sections. For equipment dealers and systems integrators working in the food-and-beverage manufacturing segment, this type of platform standardization often drives multi-site rollout opportunities.
The Ken's Foods case reflects a broader push in food manufacturing toward distributed, on-machine control architectures that reduce panel real estate, cut installation labor, and deliver the operational transparency that modern energy-and-sustainability benchmarking programs increasingly require. As commissioning timelines tighten and skilled labor remains scarce, the ability to deploy intuitive, pre-configured drives directly on equipment — rather than engineering bespoke panel layouts — is becoming a specification priority for both greenfield builds and retrofits of legacy lines.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
