LRC-400 and LRC-600 - Beverage Pouches

Case Study Summary PDF

SipTop's drink filled pouches were becoming increasingly popular in North America and abroad and a much greater production speed was required to meet market demand. Brute speed was of course not the only requirement, efficiency and cost reduction were also vital to ensure the economics made sense both today and in the future. A new robotic solution - and a new way of looking at robotics - was installed by Langen at SipTop’s Canadian production facility.

The Langen solution:
• Improved efficiency while ensuring product integrity.
• Sped up the packaging operation (factor of four).
• Dramatically reduced labour costs.

Installation Elements

• Four Langen LRC-400 tray packers.
  
  
• Two Langen LRC-600 palletizers.
  
  
• Two custom 4-lane intermittent motion infeed conveyors / collators.
  
  
• EFFE-16 Tray Erector.
  
  
• Surrounding conveyance and line control.
  

Product

• Beverage Pouches.
  

Product Configuration

• 8-count of the "IV" product - a vodka-based drink.
  
  
• 10-count of juice pouches in a variety of flavours.
  
  
• 24-count of water pouches.
  
  
• 6 pallet patterns and two pallet sizes.
  
  
• 3 case sizes

Project Overview

• The LRC-400 tray load cell comprises four M420i FANUC robots fitted with Langen tray loading EOAT (each robot has two vacuum systems) and conveyance:
  • This cell is fed by four dual-head fillers at the rate of 140 ppm per filler and a combined rate of 560 ppm for the entire cell.
    
    
• The LRC-600 palletizing cell is comprised of two M410i FANUC robots fitted with multi-function Langen EOAT, one pallet dispenser, two slip sheet stations, one turntable and conveyance:
  • This cell is divided into two halves: one half is fed by two fully automated infeeds, the other half is fed by one automatic and one manually fed infeed.

Additional Features

• In addition to varying pallet pack patterns and quantities, the location and number of inserted slip sheets at the LRC-600 cell are capable of being customized to meet the demands of specific customers.
  
  
• Both the LRC-400 and LRC-600 systems are divided into two separate cells so that while one cell is being maintained the packaging process can continue in the other.
  
  
• The LRC-600 features a multi-function head that picks and places pallets, picks and inserts slip sheets, and places and arranges three different cases of product onto pallets.
  
  
• The LRC-600 cell features one manually loaded infeed. This was incorporated to allow SipTop to perform their regular quality checks. During these checks a randomly selected pallet is depalletized and checked for pouch and case integrity as well as other quality assurance procedures. The manual infeed allows cases to be smoothly re-introduced into the system as a result of the QA process.