An automated dairy production flow

Challenge
To increase the production capacity within limited floor space. Three production lines had to be connected and balanced, ending up at one palletizing cell.

Solution 
An automated production flow solution based on a stainless steel conveyor system and high-performance, centralized palletizing cell. The conveyor system picks up three different product trays simultaneously, balances the flow and transports them to the palletizing cell. The cell operates at a speed of 80 trays per minute and handles both empty and full pallets, labelling and wrapping.

Benefits
Increased production capacity and improved competitive advantage by being able to meet growing demand and acquire new customers. The system installed is robust as well as easy to clean, modify and maintain. It offered the lowest total cost of ownership. 

A capacity investment

The constantly increasing demand of the company’s famous dairy products resulted in the need to not only invest in new modern high-efficient packing machines but also in a fully automated systems of transportation and palletizing. The change of the production line layout required a detailed analysis of the processes and suppliers were also evaluated for their technological knowledge and industry experience.
FlexLink Poland was entrusted with the task of designing and delivering the conveyor system, including a centralized turnkey palletizing cell with labelling and wrapping.

A product flow challenge

FlexLink had to design a system capable of handling and balancing three production lines at different speeds: the Cream line, Kephir line and Quark line. The limited floor space and requirement on an easily cleanable solution made it even more challenging. The last part of the system, the robot cell, not only had to operate at 80 trays per minute but also handle empty and full pallets, wrapping and labelling. All of this was required in a very limited floor space where you normally would use several palletizing cells to reach the capacity targets.

An automated production flow solution

The solution was an automated production flow system based on the stainless steel conveyor, X85X and a high-performance, centralized palletizing cell. The conveyor system picked up the three different product trays simultaneously, balanced the flow and transported them to the palletizing cell. The cell operated at a speed of 38 pallets per hour, handling both empty and full pallets, labelling and wrapping.