Nestlé Purina deployed Spot to automate thermal and acoustic inspections in their packaging lines

Nestlé Purina deployed Spot to automate thermal and acoustic inspections in their packaging lines. Autonomous inspections allowed Nestlé Purina to give time back to the maintenance technicians, better predict and plan repairs, and ensure reliable operations.

“In the case of Spot and the case of freeing up that manpower to be able to work, if Spot can find these issues for us in between our changeovers in between different production runs, we’re able to catch those issues ahead of time that allows us to be more predictive, more preventative rather than reactive,” said Scott Smith, Nestlé Purina.

“We don’t see Spot as just thermal and acoustic inspection. We see Spot as something more of a tool that we can use for other applications. And we’re just starting to explore that and see what we can do in collaboration with Boston Dynamics to make Spot even more useful for our factories,” added Alyssa Carter, senior specialist, robotics engineering at Nestlé Purina.

The company has spent some time on digital transformation and saw added value in the use of acoustic compressed air leak detection moving beyond regular predictive maintenance.

The Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) brewery in Leuven, Belgium took Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot on a test run in 2022 to see how many mechanical issues or air leaks it could find in the sprawling facility. Less than two hours later, they were ready to offer the robot a full-time job.

Since this test run Spot has become a key part of AB InBev’s “Brewery of the Future” program, which invests in emerging technology to support the company’s ambition of achieving net-zero operations at the Leuven facility by 2028.

Spot conducts 1,800 individual inspections each week across ten packaging lines that churn out over 50,000 containers of Stella Artois, Budweiser, and Corona beer every hour. In its first six months of deployment, Spot discovered nearly 150 anomalies and slashed average repair times from a few months to a mere 13 days.

“Our machinery experiences a lot of wear over time, so predictive maintenance is a top priority,” said David Gregory, scale and innovation manager at AB InBev. “Spot is seeing more than double the anomalies we were expecting, but we’re also now able to make repairs and see performance increases and energy reduction within the brewery.”

With local roots dating back to 1366, the Leuven facility is world famous for its age, as well as being one of the largest breweries in Europe. Established in 1992, the facility covers the equivalent of 30 soccer fields, with four brewing houses and over 800 employees.

The packaging floor is a labyrinth of stainless-steel piping and conveyor belts that move bottles and cans through the filling and packaging process. Intricate machinery—including pumps, compressors, gearboxes, and conveyor motors—are critical for production.

At this scale, any mechanical issue that threatens to slow or halt production is a major concern, especially since the packaging lines operate around the clock when not under repair. Preventing unscheduled downtime means identifying mechanical problems before they reach critical failure.