Success story at a food manufacturer
At a food product manufacturer, large quantities of pallets of orders must be assembled daily, each containing up to 10 different types of products packed in boxes. Buyers of these products require specific quantities of each type. Automating this process proved challenging, but thanks to the deployment of our Spider gantry robots, an efficient and reliable solution was realised.
Challenges when palletising food products
Automatic depalletising required the robot to be able to reach up to 10 different pallets, each containing a different type of product. The choice of the Spider gantry robot was logical because of its radius of action, which could be adjusted to reach all pallets. Moreover, the pallets could be arranged next to each other, which facilitated logistics for the supply and removal of pallets.
Non-straight pallet loads
A major challenge was that the pallets of boxes were not always delivered perfectly straight. Indeed, during transport, the loads could become slightly tilted, preventing the robot from working with pre-set destacking coordinates. The solution was to let the robot ‘find’ the loads and adjust coordinates based on the shifted position of the load on the pallet. This was possible because we at Spider fully manage the source code of our robots.
Palletising food boxes
After destacking the right amount of boxes from the source pallets, they were fed to a second Spider gantry robot. This robot automatically stacked the supplied boxes on a target pallet. The compact design of the gantry robot made it possible to implement an efficient solution even in the limited factory space.
Benefits of food palletising automation
The automation of the ordering process provided numerous benefits for this food manufacturer. One of the main benefits was significantly increased efficiency. Whereas previously human workers had to manually assemble the pallets, which was time-consuming and error-prone, the deployment of Spider robots could speed up this process and make it more reliable.
Moreover, automation led to a reduction in labour costs and improved working conditions. Employees no longer had to lift and move boxes, which reduced the risk of physical injuries.
Conclusion
By deploying a single Spider palletising robot that could destack boxes from 10 different pallets, an efficient and effective automation solution was achieved for order picking. The flexibility and precision of the Spider portal robots made this choice obvious and led to a significant improvement in the logistics process at this food product manufacturer. The benefits of this automation, such as increased efficiency, reduced labour costs and improved working conditions, underline the success of this project.