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10/09/2012

Extensive Competence in Robotic Palletizing

KHS' "WE ROBOT" event makes its mark "Theory and practice complement each other excellently, all aspects of cutting-edge robotic technology were demonstrated, and there were plenty of stimuli for pioneering packing and palletizing concepts.  An outstanding event that went off like clockwork; KHS style, i.e. perfectly organized." was the unanimous conclusion of those attending KHS' "WE ROBOT" event.  More than 150 international visitors from the beverage, food, and non-food sectors experienced a highly interesting event which included talks and live presentations at KHS' plant in Worms, the competence center for packing and palletizing technology. "The amount of interest in this event was overwhelming," exclaims Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Niemeyer, CEO/CTO of KHS GmbH.  It indicates to us here at KHS that we are on the right track by providing technologically innovative systems and focusing on even higher efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability. We would like to be and remain the first choice for our customers." A highlight in Worms was a demonstration of a highly flexible palletizer for cans and the impressively precise interaction of various robot groups.  This high-capacity line, manufactured for a customer order, processes up to 120,000 cans per hour.  The cans, packed in various formations first arrive at a robot combiner group over several lanes where they are allocated to the respective palletizing robots.  The combiner also detects backups of conveyed packs and automatically sorts and forwards them to a free palletizing group.  This sophisticated, flexible system ensures that production runs smoothly and continuously. "KHS has been using robotic systems since 1996," confirms Joachim Junghans, manager of the KHS Packing and Palletizing Technology Competence Center.  "Since then, we've been continuously developing robot technology for all capacity ranges," Junghans adds.  Today, with the help of robot systems, we are able to achieve maximum capacities of up to 750 layers per hour in the field of palletizing technology.  With the flexible robot combiner, our most recent development from 2012, we are again pointing the way forward on the market.  This will make a large number of normally used pallet distributors obsolete. Norbert Pastoors, manager of the KHS Packaging Technology Product Div. summarizes the many plus points of the new robot technology: "The advantages of robotic systems are extensive and include ease of operation, quick adaptation to new conditions, fully automatic product changeover, and exact reproducibility.  Robots additionally stand to a great extent for sustainability.  Implementing robots and their exceptionally gentle method of operation thus, for example, reduces packaging material consumption, energy consumption, and maintenance costs."