More flexible food processing with an intelligent packaging line

Gentle handling of glass jars with pick and place robots
High efficiency due to fast format changes
OEE evaluation for optimum machine performance

Requirements

An efficiency plus for Kühne: A flexible packaging machine for food products

Sauces, dressings and remoulade packed quickly and safely into jars:

As a high-performance supplier of convenience products, Kühne relies on high efficiency – in production and packaging. The market leader’s requirement was for a new packaging line for barbecue sauces and remoulade: The bottles and jars needed to be packed into boxes not only efficiently, but also sustainably and intelligently.

Kühne wanted to pack six formats of the very popular “Made for Meat” barbecue sauces into boxes of various sizes on a single line – as well as additional round glass bottles with high-quality salad dressings and remoulade. “Due to the high noise level and risk of breakage, the production managers at Kühne wanted an alternative to the conventional grouping chain,” explains Andreas Keller, Sales Account Manager at Schubert.

Additionally, Kühne employees previously had to plan around two shifts for a format change. In the highly competitive B2C food market, this represented a time span that the manufacturer could no longer accept. To further increase efficiency in the packaging area, the new food packaging machine would also have to contribute to increasing the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) with intelligent performance data analysis. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) with intelligent analysis of the performance data.

Solution

Two almost identical and highly efficient packaging lines

Taking into account the two different performance levels of the upstream filling stations, Kühne was supplied with two almost identical food packaging machines from Schubert. The only difference was that the first line for packing the two remoulade jar formats required two additional F4 robots. The other system currently packs six formats of the “Made for Meat” barbecue sauces in various sizes, as well as round glass bottles of salad dressings (vinaigrettes).

The flexible Schubert systems can carry out a format changeover within 20 minutes, whereby the F4 robot product grippers (with bayonet locks), magazine plates, folding frames, and the Transmodul pick-up plates, are all changed. After the changeover, each system then simply continues to run with high quality immediately and without ramp-up times.

Sustainably packaged with Big Data on a digital platform

Big Data is the new currency – in the packaging industry as well. In the new TLM lines at Kühne, the Schubert GS.Gate gateway evaluates all machine data and networks the systems with the GRIPS.world digital platform in compliance with the highest safety standards. Optimisation potential for the entire packaging process can be identified on the basis of current production data and automatically generated weekly reports. For example, the targeted analysis of error messages increases machine availability.

We are already achieving 20 per cent more output than before, according to the OEE evaluation. The Schubert family has done an outstanding job.

Christian Instenberg

Head of Technical Support at Kühne, December 2020

Technical Details

Strong performance with pick and place robots and the Transmodul

On both food packaging machines, the packaging process is carried out according to the counterflow principle. The Transmodul from Schubert combines the process steps with exceptional efficiency: Two carton blanks at a time are destacked, erected and placed onto the Transmodul. Pick and place robots take two bottles at a time from the product conveyor and place the desired number of bottles or jars to be packed onto the Transmodul with the erected boxes. The Transmodul moves to the next station, where the two finished bottle or jar formations are gripped by an F2 robot and placed into the boxes. At the last station, another F2 robot seals the cartons and places them onto an outfeed conveyor.