Automated Packaging Line Melts Away Inefficiencies
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Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder and Bulk Engineering Case history C Grow Inc., Eau Claire, Wis., the production equipment, with the produces a complete line of fer- ice-melting products having medium- Etilizer, weed, and insect control coarse particles and the fertilizer products and ice-melting products for products having particles ranging Automated professional and retail markets. The from 1.5 to 2.2 millimeters. company packages most of the prod- packaging ucts in various-sized polypropylene bags, which are then palletized and After a product is made, it’s conveyed stretch-wrapped for transport to cus- to one of four packaging and palletiz- line melts tomers.Aboutayearandahalfago,the ing lines. Until recently, these in- company determined that it needed to cluded three automated lines and one improve production efficiency to keep manual line. Each automated line re- away up with ever-increasing customer de- quired one operator, while the manual mand, so it decided to automate its one line required four. inefficiencies remainingmanualpackagingline. To bag an ice-melting or fertilizer product using the manual packaging Packaging and palletizing the line, an operator first accessed the products bagger’s PLC and entered the appro- The company makes the various priate bag-weight setting. The PLC A company automates a products in seasonal campaigns, pro- monitored the bagger’s duplex scale packaging line to improve ducing ice-melting products from fall and regulated a bulk-and-dribble feed production and reduce labor through late winter and fertilizer and gate to control product flow to the control products from early spring scale. During operation, one operator requirements. through fall. From September manually placed empty bags on the through May, the company operates bagger’s bag-filling spout, another two 10-hour shifts a day, 5 days a operator moved the full bags through week, while the rest of the year it op- a bag sealer, and two operators at the erates a typical 40-hour week. The end of the line manually palletized the products are abrasive and corrosive to bags. The high-speed bagger can handle up to 25 bags per minute, depending on the bag size and material, and its integrated single-scale control sys- tem reliably provides accurate bag weights. Problems with the manual ment suppliers has really dwindled Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder and Bulk Engineering packaging line over the last few years. However, of the remaining suppliers in the indus- According to Randy Nandory, EC try, one really stood out, so I called Grow plant and production manager, them to get more information about operating the manual packaging line their equipment.” was labor-intensive. “Wepackage the products in everything from ten- to fifty-pound bags, with the majority Thissupplierdesignsandmanufactures being fifty-pound bags,”he says. “We customized automated packaging, pal- “We had high turnover on the had high turnover on the manual line letizing, dosing, and stretch-wrapping manual line because it was because it was physically intense. It equipment and systems for handling physically intense.” caused some ergonomic issues and drybulksolids.Nandorytalkedwiththe related injuries, which were minimal supplier’s sales manager, who traveled but still needed to be reduced.” totheEauClaireplanttoshowthecom- pany several videos of the automated equipment in action and estimate the In early 2008, the company decided to production rate for each bag size the eliminate the line and upgrade to an companyproduces. automated one. “Since we already had three automated lines,”says Nan- dory, “we knew what the labor sav- The company liked the production ings would be and that we’d be able to numbers, so Nandory traveled to the reduce injuries, improve production supplier’s manufacturing facility in efficiency, and produce more prod- Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, to learn ucts to meet our customers’needs.” more about the equipment. “After the plant tour, I sent the supplier — Pre- mier Tech Systems — some product Finding an automated solution and empty bags so they could validate The equipment manufacturer that the production numbers for us,” says supplied the EC Grow’s three old au- Nandory. “The testing showed that tomated lines no longer exists, so their equipment could handle our Nandory began searching for auto- products and bag sizes at the calcu- mated packaging and palletizing lated rates. We also learned that their equipment on the Internet. “I also equipment is operating in other plants looked through industry trade maga- in our industry and they have a lot of zines, like PBE, and went to the Pow- experience handling products like der Show in Chicago to look at ours, so we decided to purchase an au- equipment,”he says. “What I found is tomated bagger and an automated that the number of automated equip- palletizer.” The high-level palletizer can stack up to 35 bags per minute using a 5- bag-layer pattern, and its PLC can be programmed to handle a range of bag sizes and stacking patterns. The automated equipment the typical layout requiring about 295 The bag exits the sealing system and Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder and Bulk Engineering inches by 222 inches of floorspace an in-line bag turner lays it down bot- The PTK-1700 high-speed bagger and at least 181 inches of headroom. tom first on a belt conveyor that bags granular or powdered materials, moves it through the bag flattener, including fertilizers, rock salt, miner- which flattens the bag before it’s con- als, chemicals, foods, and animal A PLC with a user-friendly operator veyed across the checkweigher. The feeds, into open-mouth polypropy- interface shows stored recipes that an line’s reject system removes any bag lene, polyethylene, or paper bags at operator can quickly access for outside the preset accuracy range, en- rates up to 25 bags per minute, de- changing the bag size and palletizing suring that only on-spec bags are put pending on the bag size and material. pattern. The palletizer can make bag on the pallets. After a bag is filled, the bagger trans- layers with dimensions from 37 by 37 fers it to an automated bag-sealing to 54 by 54 inches and can handle system. The bagger’s modular plat- loads up to 600 pounds per layer or form can be configured to suit various 3,000 pounds per pallet. The pal- Since installing the automated applications, and its typical layout re- letizer automatically places empty quires about 154.5 inches by 199.75 pallets and slip sheets, and can easily bagger and palletizer, the inches of floorspace and 101 inches of handle bags weighing up to 110 company has increased the plant’s headroom. Because the bagger han- pounds. EC Grow’s palletizer is pro- production efficiency by 20 dlesabrasiveandcorrosiveproducts,it grammed to stack bags weighing 12 percent. has all Type 316 stainless steel mate- to 51 pounds, most of which are lami- rial contact surfaces and fasteners. nated and preprinted for retail. From the checkweigher, the conveyor The bagger is powered by TEFC (to- moves the bag to the palletizer, where tally enclosed fan-cooled) electrical Installing the packaging the palletizer’s twin-belt bag-turning motors and uses an Allen-Bradley equipment system turns and orients the bag in the control system that’s housed in a In late October 2008, the automated appropriate preprogrammed pattern. NEMA 12 cabinet. The bagger’s PLC bagger and palletizer arrived at the Each bag size has a different stacking has a user-friendly touchscreen oper- company’s plant along with ancillary pattern, and the palletizer alternates ator interface that allows easy trou- equipment that included several belt the stacking pattern of each layer to bleshooting and error code reading, conveyor sections, a bag flattener, a ensure pallet stability. and its self-diagnostic software has checkweigher, and a bag reject sys- emergency stop interlocks to ensure tem. In early November, the sup- operator safety during operation. The plier’s technicians installed the Improving the packaging bagger’s integrated single-scale con- packaging equipment, commissioned operation trol system consistently provides ac- the line for startup, and trained the Since installing the automated bagger curate material weighments, and its company’s operators how to operate and palletizer, the company has in- multiple-stack bag magazine allows and troubleshoot everything. creased the plant’s production effi- fast reloading and quick bag-size ciency by 20 percent. “We can switch changeovers. the line over to a different bag size in To bag a product using the new auto- less than ten minutes, and we no mated packaging line, an operator longer have to stop the line to rotate first loads the empty-bag magazine operators during a production run,” The bagger’s PLC has a user- with the appropriate bags. The opera- says Nandory. “We’ve also decreased friendly touchscreen operator tor accesses the bagger’s PLC and our labor requirements by seventy- calls up an appropriate recipe for fill- interface that allows easy five percent, going from four opera- ing the bags, and then accesses the troubleshooting and error code tors on the manual line to just one on palletizer’s PLC and calls up the same reading. the automated line. And we’ve seen a recipe, which tells the palletizer the decrease in injuries and employee stacking pattern to use when arrang- turnover because the automated line ing the bags. After the operator starts The AP-435 high-speed, high-level eliminated the ergonomic issues asso- the packaging line, the bagger’s palletizer automatically and effi- ciated with manually handling so pickup unit lifts an empty bag from ciently stacks up to 35 bags per many large bags. With the exception the empty-bag magazine.