German warewashing specialist MEIKO has shown that it's never too late to rethink dishwasher design from scratch, even when your company has been in business for 90 years! Based on the guiding principle that innovations should always give customers more for their money, Meiko has now added a new hood type machine to its M-iClean undercounter range. Known as the M-iClean H, this new addition offers a whole host of new features, including a hood that opens and closes automatically, a drying table, stainless steel pipework, waste water heat recovery, and a mechanism designed to stop heat escaping from the machine. "Our concept of an innovation is something that succeeds in the marketplace because people can really make good use of the novel ," says Dr.-Ing. Stefan Scheringer, CEO Meiko Group. He emphasises how popular the new features were with customers during the twelve-month test phase: "The feedback we got from our customers was fantastic – none of them want to be parted from their new machine!"
One of these enthusiastic customers is Mario Provenzano from "The Grill“ restaurant at the international Casino Baden-Baden: "We love how it saves us so much time and makes our work easier. And we appreciate the reassurance of having stainless steel piping, which suggests that the machine won't suddenly leave us in the lurch!" Dr. Ing. Thomas Peukert, who heads up the design engineering team at Meiko, explains why customers are so pleased: "We took a really close look at the dishwashing process. When people work with the machine they don't stand in front of it, but rather to the left or right. So we put the user display panel on the side of the machine at eye level, plus we created a truly ergonomic environment by getting the hood to open and close automatically so that users don't even have to touch it any more. All you have to do is tap the display panel – and we can even programme the machine to raise and lower the hood by itself by automatically detecting whether a basket is in position." For the machine operators, this creates optimised and, even more importantly, faster workflows, plus a far more pleasant working environment.
The automatic hood lifting system sets a clearly visible standard in the wash-up area, taking on key responsibility in the warewashing process, as Uwe Beyer, chef de cuisine at Hotel & Restaurant us Hainstein in Eisenach, explains: "It saves us a good 30 minutes, and our dishwashing staff put that to good use preparing vegetables and salad. They like it because it's a break in their everyday routine!"
Dr. Thomas Peukert (CTO Meiko Group) emphasises that the automatic hood lifting device represents far more than just a simple update to the design of the company's previous hood type machines: "We designed this new range of machines based on an entirely new platform that envisages the hood lifting device as the actual centrepiece rather than just a useful add-on. At the same time, the Meiko engineers have achieved some fantastic results in terms of sustainability and efficiency: the stainless steel waste water heat recovery system allows us to achieve energy savings of more than 15 percent. And by manufacturing the wash arm components with even greater precision, we've achieved a remarkable improvement in the wash results."
