Shelf Ready Packing With Speed and Precision

Background

When next walking down the supermarket aisle, spare a thought for the process behind how all the bottles, neatly packed with labels facing forward, arrived on the supermarket shelf.

In the past this was a labour intensive task, performed manually usually after hours, but now thanks to advances in technology, bottles can be positioned into cartons, forward facing as a fully automated process.

HMPS is an Australian company that specializes in the design, development and manufacturing of high quality machinery for packaging processes.

The company takes pride on being Australian designed and engineered and places great importance on ensuring the innovation of robotics and engineering continues to develop and remain in Australia.

When a global food manufacturer asked HMPS to provide an end of line solution for their high speed, condiment production line, HMPS did what they do best- designed an innovative, reliable packing machine using the latest technologies from Rockwell Automation.

Challenge
  • Dealing with multiple products
  • Designing around configurations which are still in the design stage
  • Packing hot products which changes shape and handling when product cools down
  • Designing smart ways to handle different size, weight and shaped bottles

Solutions
  • Free flow from the filler and control infeed into the Case Packer
  • A smart collation was designed using a small light weight robot, to pre-collate the bottles rather than a complex lane system

Results
  • Efficiency with fast change over times
  • Managing a large range of products on one machine
  • A fully automated machine that runs up to three shifts a day in peak period
  • A happy and loyal customer who has purchased no less than nine machines from HMPS based on a long and successful relationship with each other