How Addverb Speeded up Packaging Process for an Indian Snacks Brand in UK

A UK based Indian snacks manufacturing company faced a stiff challenge in scaling up its business because of the manual end of line operations (packaging). Manual packaging was not only hurting the reliability but was also affecting the throughput. Thereby slowing the overall production. Addverb Technologies, a global warehousing robotics company, eased out this bottleneck with the installation of robotic packaging solution, eliminating the manual intervention, speeding up the entire packaging process with high throughput, ensuring greater reliability and uninterrupted operation throughout.

Background

The UK based food processing company, one of the leading Indian snacks brand, used to offer variety of product lines, which included snacks, candy bars, nuts, various, and mixed savouries. The company is famous for providing innovative snacks with authentic Indian flavours. The company has a huge market. To meet its high demand, it has to churn out products relentlessly to replenish the shelf stock. Added to that is seasonal demand hikes during the festivals, which makes supply very difficult. Addverb Technologies is a global warehouse robotics solution firm providing automation solutions based on industrial robotics.

Challenges

The snacks brand factory works like this: Once the snacks are baked, they are tested through a metal detector, and then fed into a feeder machine. The feeder machine is responsible for the primary packaging, according to different weight measures. This is followed by a secondary packaging stage i.e cartonization of snacks packets, which used to be carried out manually. The cartons are then placed on a conveyor belt, which transports them to the next stage i.e palletization.

There are 14 lines for 14 categories of products, and each line was operated manually, which was creating a problem, resulting in a deficit in supply. At this point, the snacks brand manufacturer approached Addverb Technologies. After an inspection, Addverb was able to diagnose the problem.

Due to the constraints of manual operation, the speed of packets coming in was faster than the entire secondary packaging process, resulting in accumulation of the packets at the end of the packaging line. It may be mentioned that this is a common problem when a machine breaks down and, in the case of manually-operated machines, when operators are fatigued or inexperienced. It is also a highly time-consuming process, i.e 8 hours for the whole packaging due to manual intervention at every stage. Also, after a certain number of hours the efficiency and consistency of the operator go down resulting in further increasing the time span of the job.

Solution:

To address the problem, Addverb proposed a robotic packaging solution with the help of 3 robots per packaging line. These 3 robots which took charge of the procedure from erecting the cases to sealing the tops.

The robot in charge of erecting each case did two things:

It got hold of the more important side of the carton, using an end-effector to hold the carton in place;
It then folded the minor side of the carton to 90 degrees. An actuator, with a mounted plate, exerted force on the minor side of the carton.

After this, the minor and major flaps were closed with a L-plate and bent rods, respectively. The carton was then passed on to the bottom sealer for bottom sealing. After this stage, the carton was transported by a conveyor to the next robotic system, where two articulated robots picked six packets, one by one, with a custom end-effector and placed them in the carton, working in coordination with each other.

In short, the solution used three robots for case erection and packet placement, a conveyor system that served as the backbone of the process, and a sensor system to identify packets and cartons.

Results

The solution was a resounding success in dealing with the high cycle times, manual issues, and overall process efficiency: cycle time was reduced to 10 cycles a minute; a box was filled and packed every 6 seconds, and the system can be functioning for 24 hours a day in case of demand surges during peak seasons.

Thanks to Addverb, the snacks brand manufacturer can now maintain a steady supply to meet the needs of its customers!

Why Addverb

Being the best Indian snacks brand, the company had to look for a warehousing robotics solution partner who could provide the right kind of solution to meet the ever-growing market demand. Addverb Technologies stood out as the preferred partner for the following factors.

End-to-end solution orient approach with a thorough study of entire factory/warehouse layout before proposing a solution for best operational efficiency.
Wide experience in selecting the best suitable robot for the system and all the supporting systems like conveyors, grippers vision system and programming
Dedicated team of experienced engineers and experts for each client through-out and after-implementation
100% safe robotic packaging system for operation across various industries
Customized designs for wide temperature variations and contaminations
Highest Quality Standards -Procurement of finest quality of raw materials and modern machines