Hard work leads to great result

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Tom King, a Calgary entrepreneur, is rightly proud of a labor-saving machine he has built.

He has a history of building things: King has founded three companies. Manitou in Motion is his latest.

Under the Manitou logo, King has designed and produced a robotic machine that removes fecal material from the carcasses of cattle. The invention is intended to decrease difficult manual labor in the meat packing industry.

He is working to develop additional uses for the prototype. He said currently the robot has a life expectancy of three to five years, perhaps much longer.

This robot is extremely high in intelligence and has been King's prime project since December of 1999. King anticipates the robot to be market-ready within the next year; it will sell for an estimated $200,000 U.S.

He has instigated no promotions whatsoever thus far, he said, although his extensive research has helped him profile prospective buyers. He has one in sight.

King went into four meatpacking factories to determine the best use for a robot in that industry. He examined all the goals and tasks of packing plant workers and designed a robot to specifically fit their needs.

"Inside the plant they had a need, but they didn't recognize how a robot would help them," said King.

As of now he will not reveal his buyer's name, but said, "It is one of the larger beef producers in continental North America."

He has spoken to other packers to determine what an ideal robot is for them.

For now his product is extremely secluded, because he wants to ensure that he is recognized as the sole owner, designer and inventor of a robot that serves this function. Also, King is looking at how the robot may be designed to serve other purposes in the future, such as ordinance disposal.

He is Ojibwe and he spent most of his life in Waterloo, Ont. He began his career as a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in 1984 and has been involved in research and development since 1975.

There is a great need for a machine such as his in the meat packing industry, because the work is strenuous and labor-intensive, said King. Many workers experience immense strain on their backs and shoulders.

If the machine breaks and needs mechanical repair, a plant's maintenance department is able to fix it, he pointed out. If there was a functional error in the robot, then one of the Manitou in Motion engineers would need to fix it. The robot will come with a standard one-year warranty.

"Right now it is sufficient to say that this robot will be accepted industry-wide; it doesn't matter who the company is. It is positioned, in terms of salability, to be put in any beef packing plant," King commented.

He chose to found Manitou in Motion by himself to prevent the hassle of working with partners.

"Partners are like marriages - you negotiate, you compromise, you change. I don't feel like compromising; I don't feel like changing. I have a strong intuition that this will work and I also have the means to do it by myself," said King.

King has had approximately 11 employees working on different components of the robot. He designed all the vision components of the machine himself.

He plans on expanding his company internationally, selling to meat packers from all around the world.

Particularly, he plans on zeroing in on the three meat packers in the United States that control more than 70 per cent of the packing industry.

With Alberta's booming economy, however, there is a huge business here, and King wants to take advantage of it.

With endless days and roughly half a million dollars invested, King expects a heavy return from the finished product. And when he's done he'll move on to bigger and better things, he said.