For
decades, the quality of product packaging has grown in importance.
Today, the packaging can be nearly as important to customer
satisfaction and supply chain management – and therefore
profitability – as the product itself.
Consider
the complexity of modern consumer packaged goods, from iPads to
cosmetics. Then there are the track-and-trace requirements of the
pharmaceutical industry. Not only do governmental regulations around
the world require drugs and medical devices to be tracked from raw
materials through final unit Courtesy of Adept Technology, Inc.sales,
these products are regularly manufactured in one location and
packaged in another. To meet regulatory requirements, track-and-trace
programs need to be very robust to track a wide variety of product
types that often appear very similar across multiple manufacturing
and packaging facilities. Food processing also is coming under
greater regulatory pressure to adopt automation to achieve new
track-and-trace, consistency, and cleanliness standards.
Combine
regulatory requirements with the needs of modern manufacturing and
processing lines that increasingly handle a wider variety of products
– each with their own special processing requirements – and the
drive in packaging to greater automation, and specifically
vision-guided automation, doesn’t just make sense…but dollars,
euros, and yuan as well.
Flexible
Packaging Drives Markets
“
Adept
Robotics has been in robotic packaging from the beginning,”
explains Mark Noschang, Manager of Applications Engineering at robot
manufacturer Adept Technology, Inc. (Pleasanton, California). “We
brought the first SCARA-style robot to the market, and a year later
we introduced vision guidance of robots Courtesy of Adept Technology,
Inc.to the market. During the past few years, we’ve reaffirmed our
participation in the packaging market, especially with the addition
of new gripping technologies and robot platforms like the high-speed
Quattro. Today, we serve both primary and secondary packaging
applications, and we’ve also seen a big demand in food packaging as
well.” Primary packaging refers to bottles and vials and blister
packs, while secondary packaging is the carton or end-of-line
packaging.
According
to Noschang, packagers – particularly those in the food and other
seasonal industries – are moving toward robotic packaging and away
from discrete packaging machines due to robotics’ traditional
strengths, as well as the increasing need for flexible manufacturing
lines.
“Discrete
or hard automation systems
work great if you’re going to pick up a product from the same
position every time, move it another location every time, and not
change anything for years,” Noschang adds. “But I haven’t seen
an application like that for a long time. Today, a chicken breast
processor often uses different packaging for different customers. For
example, Wal-Mart may tell the supplier you have this amount of shelf
and refrigeration space for your product, but Target will have a
different space requirement. So the food processor has to adapt to
different customer needs, and hard-tool solutions make that a
difficult proposition. With robotic automation, you simply switch to
a different program, switch the line, and you’re running –
regardless of whether you’re putting 10 waffles in a box for this
customer or 24 waffles in a box for another customer. And when you
add machine vision, you can verify whether the waffle is burned or
has chocolate chips, ensuring that the correct product goes into the
right package.”
Machine
vision System is the final piece of the puzzle. Vision allows the
robot to account for variations in part presentation while providing
additional value to the customer by adding inspection tasks. A recent
example for multi-inspection packaging solutions that use vision
comes from LEONI Vision Solutions (Lake Orion, Michigan). LEONI
developed a two-step inspection process that could identify cracks
and bubbles in both clear portions and opaque areas on painted glass
bottles while checking barcodes and labels at the same time. The
solution eliminated the need for multiple manual inspectors while
providing more consistent results.
Easing
Labor Shortages While Improving Quality
In
seasonal markets, such as various agricultural products,
vision-guided robotics are helping to solve shortages of qualified
workers while improving quality. “Seasonal industries have a hard
time making sure they have enough labor during crunch times,”
Noschang explains. “On top of fluctuating demand throughout the
year, these operations often have a lot of turnover among employees,
which makes training less cost-effective. You program a robot once
and it remembers from one season to the next. It won’t scratch its
nose or violate any of the signs you see all along the walls of food
processing plants, and it doesn’t require training every year.
Moving to a robot automation solution also allows these companies to
choose their best workers and move them into line maintenance and
other higher paying jobs, which is good for the employer and the
employee.”
Today,
manufacturing industries are in the middle of an important change as
product mixes and the need to respond to individual markets and
customers argues against centralizing manufacturing and packaging in
low-cost labor markets. Automation is a critical component to
bringing manufacturing back to developed countries and markets where
overhead costs are higher and customers demand higher product
customization. This trend is likely to continue indefinitely.
Manufacturers that can quickly respond to local market needs with
flexible production and packaging lines will gain an important
competitive edge in today’s fast-changing marketplace.
Menzel
Vision & Robotics Pvt Ltd
Address:
4, A-Wing, Bezzola Complex,
Sion
Trombay Road, Chembur
400071
Mumbai, India
Tel:(+91)
22 67993158
Fax:
(+91) 22 67993159
Mobile:+91
9323786005 / 9820143131
