For ready-to-eat proteins like nuggets and patties, consistent cooking is both a food safety and a quality issue. Undercooked product risks recalls, settlements, and a PR disaster; overcooked product means yield loss, scrap, and disappointed consumers.

Most plants manage this by controlling process parameters and sampling internal temperatures. The weak point is coverage: a probe measures one piece at a time, at one spot on the belt. It can’t show what happened between samples or whether one side of the conveyor runs differently from the other.

Thermal Intelligence by Eigen uses thermal cameras and AI models to inspect 100% of product, flagging cook deviations as they emerge, and giving you full traceability when something goes wrong.

What Thermal Intelligence can identify

Potentially undercooked product

Every product’s external temperature is monitored, and models trained on your product flag thermal patterns likely to indicate a cook deviation. Where probes spot-check a sample, Thermal Intelligence watches 100% of production, so an anomaly triggers a targeted probe check instead of surfacing hours later.

Uneven cooking across the belt

A normal setpoint doesn’t guarantee a normal cook. Airflow, humidity, oil condition, burners, fans, dampers, and heat exchangers all shift the effective cook, creating unevenness across the belt that the eye can’t see, and the consumer eventually notices.

Other key features

Automated SKU switching

Changeovers take care of themselves: the system learns what good and bad thermal patterns look like for each specific SKU, and when the PLC signals a product change, the right model loads automatically. No operator training, no manual re-tuning.

Complete records for traceability and isolating faulty batches

Every inspection is recorded, so when a problem surfaces, you can trace it back and isolate the faulty batch to the exact minute. Instead of scrapping or recooking hours of production, you pull only what’s actually affected.

Integration

The camera is placed at the exit of the oven or fryer, mounted above the line or to the side depending on steam, oil, and the conditions at your line.

An Eigen OneView edge device processes every image on-device and drives an operator HMI that shows the result for the last product inspected, with results and images streaming to OneView Cloud for tracking, trending, and review.

See the system work on your line

Reach out to our team to learn more and to schedule an on-site demo. During the demo, our engineers set up the system on your line so you can see the results in real-time.