Patent ID: 8812146

Claim:
Apparatus arranged to combine a plurality of food items into a batch having a set number of items, comprising: a production line; a portioning machine including a knife arranged to cut a bulk piece of foodstuff into slices which constitute said food items, and which are placed together on the production line to form batches, a source controller for controlling the portioning machine and the production line, wherein the source controller is configured to: operate the portioning machine to slice the bulk piece of foodstuff into said slices, whereby each slicing operation of the portioning machine produces one slice of the foodstuff; determine whether or not a part or an item of the bulk piece of foodstuff is suitable for being included in a batch having a set number of batch items being produced and to identify any item unsuitable for being included in the batch being produced as a non-batch item, wherein identifying the non-batch items includes determining a remaining thickness of the bulk piece of foodstuff and identifying the remaining bulk piece as the non-batch item, if the remaining thickness is below an acceptable thickness for the food items to be included in said batches; instruct the production line to advance the batch being produced as a partial batch without the non-batch item being added to it if a part of the bulk piece of foodstuff is identified as the non-batch item that is not suitable in the batch being produced; instruct the portioning machine to supply the non-batch item onto the production line; instruct the production line to remove the non-batch item from the apparatus; determine the number of partial items in the partial batch and the number of remainder items in a remainder batch, the remainder batch including the number of items that must be added to the partial batch to make a full batch; and instruct the portioning machine to create the remainder batch; and a combiner arranged to add the remainder batch to the partial batch to make up a full batch, the apparatus being configured to arrange the items of the full batch such that each of the items of the full batch are being arranged in an at least partly overlapping fashion with respect to another one of the items of the full batch.