The Challenge
The demand for automation technology is growing as companies across industries look for ways to streamline and speed production and manufacturing. One of India's biggest and oldest beverage companies was facing challenges with their manual palletizing operations and needed to significantly increase production capacity while improving efficiency and quality.
The company required a solution that could handle high volume production with velocity, variety and visibility, while enhancing quality at an optimum cost. Traditional manual palletizing was limiting their production capacity and visibility, creating bottlenecks in their manufacturing operations.
The Solution
Robotics and automation are dramatically reshaping the global economy. Armstrong Dematic helped the client use the newest technologies to enhance their industrial operations by supplying an integrated Robot system which meets their demands of high volume, velocity, variety and visibility, enhancing the quality in optimum cost.
Armstrong Dematic's Cepheus is one such integrated system which was recently installed at the facility. Armstrong Dematic Cepheus can achieve a maximum of 200 pallets per hour and has been tested for countless hours to ensure the quality. A total of 3 Robotic Palletizing systems were provided to handle 7 production lines.
Each system was uniquely crafted to meet the high throughput of different varieties of SKU at the same time. With an IT collaborated annunciation system the real time production data enhances the visibility of the production.
Armstrong Dematic's Cepheus made the lives of the customer easy by providing a means to automatically adjust the speed of the whole production line to suit whichever activity is the critical constraint for a given batch. Armstrong Dematic's Cepheus can automatically make tiny adjustments in line speed to improve the overall balance of individual lines and maximize the effectiveness of the whole manufacturing system.
Armstrong Dematic emphasized a lot on the safety of the Robotic palletizer by perfectly using automation at all the possible pinch points in the system. While the system works in high speed, high volume production applications, it can make adjustments on the fly, switching seamlessly between product types without the need to stop the line to change programming. A fully automated system ensures no human contact during the palletizing operation.
The Results
The partnership with Armstrong Dematic in automating operations at the beverage facility delivered significant improvements across multiple operational metrics:
Variety and Visibility
- As compared to traditional manual palletizing, the Robotic Palletizing system - Cepheus increases the visibility to 99.99%
- The production capacity of the plant jumped to twice as much as before
- The production handling capacity of the plant became twice thereby improving inventory handling
- Real-time production data enhances the visibility of the production
Operational Efficiency
- Enhanced plant space utilization by 1.5 times
- System well designed considering easy movement of material handling vehicles
- Smooth handling of the product and efficient stacking of the boxes on pallet results in less product damages
- Maximum capacity of 200 pallets per hour
- 3 Robotic Palletizing systems handling 7 production lines
Return On Investment
- ROI of just 2.5 years
- Completely eliminated Labour cost at the packaging area at individual lines
- Improved overall balance of individual lines and maximized effectiveness of the whole manufacturing system
