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Unique conveyor system achieves accurate packing for lightweight products
A three-belt conveyor system was recently specially designed by YPS engineers to automate the shrink wrapping of small, lightweight e-cigarette packs.
An e-cigarette manufacturer approached YPS looking to completely automate the bundling process at the infeed of their packing process, to speed up production and reduce reliance on labour.
The system had to guarantee a neat seal every time, for varying product collations. YPS supplied a fully automatic, servo-driven L-sealer to wrap the packs, but it was the infeed
conveyor arrangement that was specially designed to provide the level of speed and accuracy required.
Three infeed conveyor belts were supplied, with individually controllable speeds. The first
conveyor moved relatively slowly to allow a single operator to load the products in the correct rotation for shrink wrapping and the correct order for the desired collated packs.
A sensor located on the second conveyor would read when the final conveyor was full, with no gapping between products. This sensor would then release the final conveyor to rotate by a programmed amount, related to the number of packs required for the current collation, and push them into the sealer for the bundle to be shrink wrapped.
Changing the line configuration for a different product collation was a simple case of changing the recipe at the intuitive operator interface. This would change the amount of rotation for the final belt, allowing bundles of anything between two and ten products to be pushed to the sealer.
The YPS engineering team implemented an innovative system on the sealing jaw to guarantee that the lightweight, vulnerable packs would pass through the sealing process without it activating, eliminating the possibility of damage to the packs.
The automatic l-sealer controls were paired with the shrink tunnel controls so that all parameters could be accessed from the same user interface, making the equipment easy to use and ensuring full control over the wrapping operation.
The specially configured
shrink-wrapping line produced a neatly sealed product bundle each time and could be easily changed when different product collations were required.
“We look to work with our
customers to understand their exact needs each time, so we can deliver a system that works precisely as they want it to,” commented Glyn Johnson, YPS’ MD. “Our engineering team bring their experience and knowledge to any situation, however unusual, so we can find the right solution.”
YPS
info@yps.co.uk www.yps.co.uk
Kardex
www.kardex.com
Improve Your Order Fulfilment Process: A Guide on Strategies & Technologies
The Importance of Order Fulfilment Order fulfilment is a high priority for most organisations due to the direct impact on customer satisfaction and the labour resources order picking necessitates. Incorrect or late orders create the potential for an unhappy customer who might decide to shop elsewhere or use another vendor next time (not to mention absorbing the costs of the return handling, shipment of the replacement and associated labour to handle the return). Additionally, order picking activities typically consume 50% - 70% of a facility’s operating expenses, it’s a huge cost—one that most operations are eager to reduce. Couple these factors with razor-thin margins and rising customer expectations (as consumer trends from B2C delivery bleed into B2B) and order fulfilment operations quickly becomes a main focus for most warehouse and distribution centers. With customers demanding faster, more frequent orders in smaller quantities with custom labelling and electronic delivery tracking - many warehouses are turning to technology to help streamline and automate their order fulfilment process.
Improving Your Order Fulfilment Process There are three major benefits to improving the processes in your order fulfilment operation: improved picking speeds. increased picking accuracy, and reduced labour costs.
Improved Picking Speeds (Pick Rate) Picking speed measures the amount of time it takes to retrieve the product from its storage location and place it into the order container - this is the picking speed. Picking speed is usually measured with some sort of variation of how many (parts, lines, orders) are completed in a specific timeframe (hour, day) or by the number of people. The picking portion brings five different activities together —receive direction; travel location; locating the item at the pick location; item pick; and item wait/mark.
The biggest opportunity to increase picking speeds is to decrease travel time – which in a conventional, manual storage operation accounts for as much as 60% - 65% of a worker’s time. The right picking strategy coupled with goods-to-person technologies (Vertical Carousel Modules, Vertical Lift Modules, Horizontal Carousel Modules, Multi-Shuttles and Vertical Buffer Modules) are designed to decrease walk time and increase picking speeds by delivering stored product to the operator.
FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS | MAY 2024 49
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