Estimated average annual cost of using rule based machine vision
For food-machine OEMs: a tool for your customer conversations
Help your customer see what fixed inspection is costing them.
Walk through this with your customer's operations, quality or finance lead, using their numbers, not benchmarks. What comes out is a defensible, line-item view of what continuing with fixed inspection costs them today, and what governed AI grading with the Robovision Platform could recover.
Site labour baseline
Enter this once, as a monthly figure. Sections C, D and E's labour-cost fields auto-fill from it, so your customer doesn't have to convert the same wage by hand. Tick "different rate" in any section where that specific role genuinely earns differently.
Site fully-loaded annual FTE cost
Salary + benefits + overhead, for a typical production/QC worker; used only to derive the monthly rate below
€
Standard annual working hours
Default is 2,080 (40 hrs × 52 weeks); used to convert Section C's monthly rate into an hourly equivalent for its hours-based calculation
Monthly rate: –
A
Grading loss: giveaway and false rejects
Annual production revenue
For the line or site you're pricing this against
€
Grading-related loss (giveaway + false rejects)
Ask their quality or ops lead. Manufacturing-stage loss varies too much by product to assume a figure: it runs roughly 13% of UK food waste by weight (WRAP, 2023) and about 19% of total EU food waste (Eurostat, 2025), but their own giveaway and false-reject rate is the number that matters
%
Recovery % through consistent AI grading
AI ADC and Defect Measurement apply the same Classify → Measure judgement to every unit. In one Food deployment, moving from fixed vision to governed AI grading cut waste from an industry-standard 30–40% to 3–5% (representative Food-vertical figure, not tied to the numbers above)
%
Annual grading-loss recovery
–
Revenue × grading-related loss % × recovery %.
B
Escape and recall exposure
One foreign-object or contamination escape is a recall. Lot-level records, generated automatically as AI ADC and Defect Measurement grade the line rather than assembled after the fact, narrow an escape to a batch withdrawal instead of a full recall.
Estimated recall probability (3-year window)
Their own risk assessment
%
Average cost of a significant recall claim
Pre-filled at the European average: about €8M for claims of €5M or more (Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, European Recall Index). Adjust down for a smaller event
€
Expected annual risk exposure
–
(Probability × €8M) ÷ 3. Direct claim cost only; excludes legal fees, fines and reputational impact. This is expected-value risk exposure, the standard way to annualise a low-probability, high-severity event, not a cash-flow saving. It's shown separately below and isn't counted in the ROI or payback figures.
C
Traceability and compliance labour
Article 18, Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 requires food businesses to identify their immediate suppliers and customers for every lot: one step back, one step forward. In the UK, the same requirement continues to apply as retained law post-Brexit, enforced by the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland rather than the European Commission. Traceability failures that delay a withdrawal expose operators to fines, market suspension and heightened audits on either side of the Channel.
EC 178/2002 (EU)Retained in UK law
Hours/year on traceability, audit prep and documentation
From their quality and compliance team
Loaded monthly labour cost
Auto-filled from the site labour baseline above
€
% reducible through automation
Lot linking, batch records and supplier IDs generated as Indurion Suite grades the line, not assembled by hand for an audit
%
Annual compliance labour savings
–
Hours × hourly-equivalent rate (monthly rate × 12 ÷ standard annual hours) × automation %.
D
Manual grading and QC labour
If the same people who grade also handle Section C's compliance paperwork, don't count their hours in both sections; reduce one input so the same hours aren't paid twice.
FTE-equivalents on manual visual grading/QC
Count across the line and quality team
Fully loaded monthly cost per FTE
Auto-filled from the site labour baseline above
€
% recoverable through consistent AI grading
Classify → Measure applied the same way on every unit, every shift, every season, without an inspector re-learning the line each time the product changes
%
Annual manual-grading labour savings
–
FTEs × (monthly cost × 12) × recovery %.
E
Workforce transition risk
Nearly a third of the UK food and drink manufacturing workforce is projected to reach retirement age by 2033–35, and the sector already can't recruit enough younger workers to replace them (Food & Drink Federation, 2023). Every retirement doesn't just cost a headcount; it costs the years of judgement an experienced grader applies without thinking about it, such as what a bruise looks like at the edge of tolerance. AI ADC and Defect Measurement, governed by Indurion Suite, apply that same judgement consistently and keep it on record, so it doesn't retire when the person does.
FDF, UK, 2023
The fields below have no reliable EU/UK benchmark; ask your customer for their own figures rather than trusting a default.
A role Section D already automates away doesn't need replacing when it retires, so this section nets the headcount below against Section D's automation % before pricing replacement cost. Fill in Section D first for an accurate figure here.
Total production workforce headcount
All shift-based production roles at the site(s) in scope, including the QC/grading FTEs counted in Section D above; the netting below assumes Section D's headcount is part of this total, not separate from it
% of workforce eligible to retire by 2033–35
UK sector-wide benchmark is roughly 30% (FDF, 2023); ask for their own age profile if they track it
%
Cost per replacement hire
Typical UK/EU manufacturing hiring cost for a production role runs roughly €5,000–€10,000 including advertising, agency fees and vacancy cost (UK recruitment-sector data, 2025)
€
Weeks to full productivity per new hire
No EU/UK-wide benchmark exists for this; ask their line manager
Loaded monthly labour cost per production worker
Auto-filled from the site labour baseline above
€
Productivity loss during ramp-up
No EU/UK-wide benchmark exists for this either; ask their line manager for a realistic figure
%
Expected annual workforce exposure
–
Net replacement need: gross retiring workforce, minus the FTEs Section D already automates away. Direct replacement: net replacement need × cost per hire. Productivity drag: net replacement need × ramp weeks × weekly-equivalent cost (monthly rate × 12 ÷ 52) × productivity loss %. Total divided by years to 2034 (the midpoint of the FDF's 2033–35 window) for an annualised figure. Like Section B, this is a future exposure smeared into an annual rate for comparison, not a cash-flow saving; it's shown separately below and isn't counted in the ROI or payback figures.
Recurring operational savings: drives the ROI below
A: Grading loss–
C: Traceability and compliance labour–
D: Manual grading labour–
Annual recurring savings
€0
Risk exposure: context only, not counted above
B: Escape and recall exposure–
E: Workforce transition risk–
Annual risk exposure
€0
Expected-value risk, not realised cash flow. It's the reason to act, not budget that appears; it doesn't feed the ROI or payback figures below.
↗
ROI and payback period
One-time price
€
Price to retrofit governed grading onto their existing machine
Indurion Suite subscription (annual)
€
Annual benefit
–
3-year ROI
–
Payback period
–
Annual benefit is recurring operational savings only (Sections A, C, D). 3-year ROI = ((annual benefit × 3) − total 3-year cost) ÷ total 3-year cost × 100. Payback = one-time cost ÷ (monthly savings − monthly subscription), the point net cash flow turns positive. For context, Robovision's modelled structural TCO advantage for a typical governed grading line is approximately €110,400 over ten years (a separate, modelled KB figure, not tied to the numbers above).
Sources: WRAP, Food Surplus and Waste in the UK: Key Facts (2023) · Eurostat, Food waste and food waste prevention, estimates (2025) · Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, European Recall Index (Sedgwick) · Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, Article 18; retained in UK law via the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 · Food & Drink Federation, workforce ageing estimate (2023) · UK manufacturing recruitment-sector cost-per-hire data (2025) · Robovision KB proof points: €110,400 structural TCO/line/10yr, 3–5% vs 30–40% de-coring waste (modelled/representative figures, not named-customer results). All other figures are your customer's own inputs; nothing here is pre-filled from an unverifiable or non-EU/UK source. Verify and refresh sources periodically, they will date.