Automating the palletising function with the help of the FANUC M-710iC / 50 robot has allowed Brunos to keep pace with the production line , enabling the company to fulfil its ever-growing order book .
FANUC robot eases palletising bottleneck for salad dressing producer Brunos
Founded in 2001 , Brunos produces cooled salad dressings and gourmet butters . Since its inception , sales have risen steadily , prompting this progressive family business to employ increasingly sophisticated production methods to keep up with demand . Now a 45-employee enterprise , Brunos produces four million products each year at its 3,500m2 production facility in Sarnen , central Switzerland .
Although its production line was already automated , until recently , Brunos ’ packaging and palletising function was still a manual process . This resulted in bottlenecks at the final stage of the process , as employees struggled to match the speed of the automated line . Unable
8 FDPP - www . fdpp . co . uk to meet increased order levels and at the limit of its capabilities , the firm began to look for an alternative solution – but complex palletising patterns and limited space made their search a potential challenge .
“ We had reached our limits ,” explains Managing Director Michael Arnold . “ By this point , we had two or three employees packing bottles manually into cardboard boxes , but they could hardly keep up with the speed of our production line . We began thinking about an automated solution for the palletising process , but our space was rather tight . We needed to find a solution with a compact footprint that would tie in with our existing automated processes in terms of quality and productivity .”
Fulfilling complex palletising patterns
Brunos turned to Robotec Solutions AG , a local provider of robot-assisted automation , with more than 800 successful installations to its name across a diverse range of sectors . Jörg Lanz , Head of Sales at Robotec Solutions AG , says : “ Working together with our customers , our most important task is to find the best automation solution for the application . In this project to palletise the bottled salad dressings , our main challenges were cycle time , space constraints and palletising patterns .”