Palletising for a Personal Hygiene Provider: Low Cost, Small Footprint, Big Benefit

In late 2019 Scott designed, built, and installed our new Compact Robot Palletiser system for a leading personal hygiene company in Australia. The new palletising system provides benefits in reliability, repeatability, efficiency, reduced product damage and is all packaged into a compact system with a small footprint within the factory.

The Compact Robot Palletiser system Scott built was to support a product line the client had recently installed. They were looking at automated options in a bid to avoid manual palletising, reducing labour costs and increasing operator safety. Our customer specified that they were looking for a compact system occupying a small footprint, which was cost-effective and easily accessible to operators while running and would need to be implemented quickly, with minimal or no disruption to existing production.

Scott had installed a different palletising system for this customer in their plant seven years ago. This positive outcome combined with our existing knowledge of the site and flexible approach made Scott the supplier of choice for this client. Scott was also able to maximise our relationship with KUKA enabling us to acquire a robot for the system faster than usual, compressing the timeline for delivery, a benefit that appealed to the customer over other automation providers.

Scott listened to what the customer needed, explored various options and worked with them to achieve the best possible solution. The resulting solution was a robot system that could have a full pallet removed without stopping the robot. This new system was the Compact Robot Palletiser, a fully automated end of line solution to palletise products using dual cells. Able to palletise up to 30 cartons per minute with a maximum height of 2.4m the system could be implemented quickly and with very little impact on the existing production lines.

The customer is very happy with the system which is delivering a good return on investment. They were pleased with the speed of Scott’s response; initial contact through to delivery was 14 weeks. The install had no impact on their existing production line and with the system being safe and easy to operate as well as easy to maintain it has surpassed the customers' expectations.

System Overview:

An operator, usually a forklift driver, can see when it is safe to enter the cell and places an empty pallet into both sides of the robot cell. Light curtains on entrances to both cells mean if the forklift, or a person, tries to enter the cell when operational or unsafe, the robot stops, doing exactly what the client asked – increasing operator safety. Once the pallet is in the cell, an operator selects the pallet pattern and starts production. The robot then picks cases from an infeed conveyor and then places in the correct pattern on the pallet in the cell in use.

Once the pallet is completed, the reverse guillotine safety guarding will raise, safely separating the cell from the robot and allowing the operator to remove the completed pallet while the robot continues palletising in the second cell. This dual cell system meant that there was no disruption to the production line and the safety systems in place gave the operators access to the cells when they were not in use.

Benefits:

• Significant cost savings through automation over manual labour
• No downtime or disruption on existing production lines during install or when in use
• Fast delivery of system
• Compact system, has a small footprint within a factory
• Reliability of the robot system
• Product handled with automated repeatability
• Improved production efficiency & increased output
• Reduced product damage
• Increased operator health & safety
• Reduced risk of damaged product in transit