Medium-sized companies in non-technical areas such as food processing usually have to draw on external service providers for automation with robots. But this leads to dependencies and high costs when reprogramming is required. However, there now are robot suppliers on the market who do not only offer powerful equipment at reasonable prices, but also support capacity building through their local representatives. A report on experience.
“Ever since our establishment in 1930, we have been specialised in processing high-quality food,” says the operations manager of Morga AG in Ebnat-Kappel (Switzerland). The family-run mid-sized company with about 100 employees produces ca. 1,500 different vegetarian products from high-quality natural foods, many of them being organic. This includes nut and dried fruit mixes, muesli, pasta, ready-to-serve meals, bouillons, fruit juices and jams, as well as teas. Particular attention is paid to healthy nutrition and taking allergies and intolerances into account. There are also various products – most of them for export – for which special regulations must be observed during production and packaging, as the respective buyers require halal or kosher certification. Apart from that, the company also operates in the field of contract filling and packaging for large department store chains.
For highly automated tea filling...
“As we act as contract fillers for various industrial consumers, this branch is particularly highly automated,” explains Morga’s technical manager. There are now four fully automatic filling systems here. With sophisticated technology, these plants produce 350 tea bags per minute, which are then individually wrapped and packed into the tea boxes in batches of 20. In the end, the system places five of these tea boxes in a tray, which the retailer can put directly onto the shelf after tearing off the lid. The trays are labelled and removed from the system by a roller conveyor.
Downstream the packaging system, a cobot robot with a suction gripper grips the outer packaging and stacks the products on pallets. Right and left of the cobot, two such pallets are always held available. As soon as one of them is full, the employees place it by another empty pallet using a pallet truck. The same employees also ensure that there are always sufficient amounts of required consumables – like tea blends, fabric bags for the tea bags, labels, boxes, etc. – available for the packaging systems. They are also responsible for reacting to fault reports and eliminating minor errors.
... another robot was needed
“When in early 2023, we had to make the decision to automate a fourth filling system, we wanted to break free from our dependence on the programmer,” recalls the operations manager. Furthermore, some of the models then available were significantly cheaper than the solutions offered by the previous provider. After taking a close look at what was available on the market, the decision for the time being was made for model RB3-1200, offered by South Korean manufacturer Rainbow. This system’s dimensions were also more adequate for the space given in front of the filling line. The previous robots had required a special cranked gripper due to the limited space.
Decisive, however, was the fact that a competent Swiss sales partner offers extensive support for this product. Compar AG is an engineering company that holds decades of experience in the automation of industrial processes with a focus on robotics and camera-based quality assurance. As the Swiss sales partner for Rainbow’s cobot systems, Compar is ready to provide its Rainbow customers not only with technical support but could also help them build their own capacity in implementing individual robot solutions.
Daring to find…
“Although we already had experience with teaching our existing robots, we were thrown in at the deep end when it came to the actual programming,” the technical manager reveals. That’s why in June 2023, they dropped by at Compar’s site in Freienbach to learn more about a Rainbow robot that was there. They received a warm welcome. It quickly became apparent that Compar was able to minimise the risks of in-house programming with comprehensive support. Using a simulation, Compar first checked the feasibility of the aspired robot solution and confirmed that the manufacturer Rainbow places high importance on operation that is easy to learn. If anyhow possible, the operator should be able to get along without needing an external integrator. Employees are supposed to be able to handle the equipment even if they don’t have in-depth know-how in complex programming. For this reason, programming and operation are also possible using common tablets available on the market.
... own solutions
“In addition to good documentation, Compar and Rainbow also provided us with a sample program and help with a suitable programming strategy,” says the technical manager. For the actual programming, he said he was often able to use pre-programmed code blocks. Compar also proved to be very supportive by giving advice and answering questions. As a result of such profound support, the system could be started up within just four weeks. Since due to his other professional tasks, he had to take on many other tasks throughout this time, he estimates the actual net time required to program the robot at only about one man-week. And all this despite the fact that the programming could not be done using common schemes because the robot wrist has to turn the other way around on the inner edge of the pallet than further out due to the limited space.
Ultimately, the entire project was realised very quickly: after being ordered in July 2023, the robot was delivered in late August and set up in September. Since November 2023, the system has been working without any problems.
Employees are “very happy”
“A particularly important aspect for us was that the employees in the department would accept the new robot,” the operations manager explains. At first they were doubtful about the adaptation, but that quickly changed and the “new one” is now seen as the best robot in the branch. Even this cobot system’s handling is extremely user-friendly. For teaching it, the respective employee can easily manually move the entire arm with released axes to the selected target position. If there is unintentional contact with an employee, the robot stops immediately and only continues after being softly tapped twice. The robot is controlled through an easy-to-understand graphic user interface on a standard tablet. To start up again after extended downtimes, the responsible employee only has to activate the robot’s control software after starting the tablet and enter information about the pallet and the stacking position on the pallet at which it is supposed to resume work.
“We are very highly with the outcome of this project. Courage and commitment have paid off. We were able to save thousands of francs and – almost more importantly – reduce our dependence on external services,” says the operations manager. We were able to save thousands of Swiss francs and – almost more importantly – reduce our dependence on external services,” summarizes the operations manager.
Klaus Vollrath b2dcomm.ch
