Project Overview:
A major plastic container manufacturing company was presented with a difficult packaging challenge by a new customer and partnered with ProMach to create a custom, highly flexible end of line system.
About the Customer:
A multinational corporation with more than 700 employees across 17 facilities. Focused on finding sustainable solutions for the consumer packaging industry, one of the largest PET and HDPE plastic container manufacturers in North America.
The Customer Challenge:
The customer wanted eight different food containers delivered on demand, each requiring a different case pack pattern, and each filling the case at a different rate. This meant that three different sized cases were required for the eight distinctive bottles and case erecting needed to occur in random order with cases arriving just in time. Waste reduction was an important factor as well, as a mix of new and used corrugated cases would be used in the process, making case handling even more challenging with significant variations in corrugated material strength.
The ProMach Solution:
This customer has worked closely with ProMach’s Brenton product brand for many years on turnkey custom solutions for case erecting, packing, and palletizing. Knowing that the corrugated cases presented a unique case handling challenge, ProMach and the customer concluded that the best solution would be a robotic-based case erecting system capable of handling the variations in corrugated case quality. The custom solution features a single robotic cell with a robust end-of-arm tool with a vacuum gripper optimized for variations in the corrugated materials that can handle all three case sizes on demand and with zero changeover time.
This turnkey end of line system includes case sealing, labeling, packing, palletizing, and stretch wrapping solutions from ProMach product brands. The entire small footprint system runs hands-free and was integrated and factory acceptance tested at ProMach’s Brenton facility leading to a rapid start up for the customer.
ProMach Brands Involved: