Looking for a Robotic Palletizing Partner?

Here are the capabilities you will want to look for in a robotic palletizing partner to ensure your project is a complete success – meeting your requirements including budget and schedule. 

• Look for similar experience – this sounds obvious, but experience extends beyond handling exactly your load or product.  Similar experience can mean similar;
•  throughput/cycle time,
• load configuration – size, shape, weight, texture
• process – loading, unloading, unitized load building, palletized load building, automated empty pallet feeding, slip sheet and tray feeding, pre-building layers etc.
• Look for a company with strong references – companies with many repeat customers

• Engineering depth – look for a company with a deep bench in engineering support, able to recover from unplanned loss of an engineer without negatively impacting your project schedule.

• Engineering experience - look for a robotics integrator with years of engineering experience to reduce the likelihood of surprises

• Listening skills – look for a company whose Sales, Project Managers, Engineering, and Senior Management have strong listening skills, take good notes and demonstrate an in-depth understanding of your project requirement.

• After market support – not all robotic integrators have the same skill sets in the area of Service and Parts support.  Find out what level of support your integrator has, and how well trained its Service Techs are.  While the robot manufacturer’s factory service technicians are very skilled with the robot itself, your integrator is much more familiar with your application’s specific operation and peripheral equipment and how the robots work in your system. 

• Look for a robotic integrator with focus – a robot integrator focused on palletizing, case filling and other end-of-line automation solutions is more likely to be able to solve your specific material handling requirements in a more cost effective, timely manner

You will find all of these strengths, and more, at Motion Controls Robotics, Inc.

Why use a robotic palletizer instead of hard automation?

• Flexibility – global competition requires more frequent product and packaging changes than ever before.   Marketers are changing products daily to obtain competitive advantage.  Manufacturing is looking to continuously squeeze out efficiencies, making minor changes that hard automation can’t adapt to.  Traditional automation solutions are cost prohibitive to change whereas major changes can be made very inexpensively in robotic automation systems.

• Software has evolved significantly over the last 30+ years of robot use; it has become very intuitive with “pattern teaching”

• Easy to understand and use operator pendant allows for simple “recipe” adjustments and error reporting

• Many fixed and flexible end of arm tools have been developed over the years with proven designs – reducing the likelihood that expensive tooling design will be required for your project

• Increased throughput

• Depending on manufacturer, today’s robots are capable of 80,000+ hours mean time between failures, with very fast Mean Time to Repair due to designs that have been improved over 30+ years of development

• Today’s robots are capable of high cycle rates, up to 28 strokes per minute for case and bag palletizing operations and 50+ for robots handling smaller, lighter products

• Reduced costs

• Labor savings go way beyond direct labor when robots are rolled out in larger quantities;  management and HR duties are reduced as well

• Automated case filling, palletizing and finished product take-away with automated material handling such as Automatic Guided Carts reduces worker compensation costs – with health care costs skyrocketing, any medical care cost you figure by eliminating direct labor will likely be conservative

• Reduced floor space requirements – this is one of the best kept secrets of automation in new building design;  carefully laid out automation for case filling, palletizing and material handling featuring robotics and other automated material handling systems can significantly reduce construction costs, and related long term facility operation costs.

• Flexible and precise

• Robotic case packing and palletizing can be done using highly flexible stacking patterns

• PalletPRO™ software allows easy creation of new palletizing patterns and greatly simplifies modifications to existing patterns

• Today’s robot control systems allow quick changeover between products using adjustable tooling and stored recipes

• Programmable

• Built-in operator pendant with color display allows easy access to stored “recipes” for your different pallet loads

• Palletizing “Recipes” keep part data such as product size and packing pattern, place locations and vacuum pattern.  An excellent robotic integrator will provide recipes for all of your existing pallet loads, and provide you with a simple way to add to, and adjust initial pallet/case patterns

• Make sure your robotic integrator provides you with a Menu selection for easy pallet pattern changeover

• Make sure your integrator will provide you with the ability to do on-the-fly palletizing and case filling adjustments

Look to Motion Controls Robotics for your material handling automation needs in areas of:

• Robotic palletizing
• Robotic depalletizing
• Flavored, or mixed case robotic palletizing
• Random order palletizing
• Robotic vision systems
• Robotic simulation
• Random pallet dispensing

Our systems are helping today’s North American manufacturers save money, keep manufacturing local, and bring manufacturing back home.