Nestlé recently celebrated the installation of two units of CoboAccess™_Pal, – an industrial, safe and easy-to-use cobotic palletising solution from Sidel – at the firm’s Special. T manufacturing site in Orbe, Switzerland.

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By automating the palletising of their Special.T capsules, Nestlé Suisse SA Orbe said it has gained higher pallet quality while benefiting from increased ease-of-operations for the plant’s workers. 

 

The latter benefit was ensured by the solution’s automation platform: based on the combination of PC and PLC, it allows better-controlled trajectories for improved collaborative robot (cobot)  picking and placing. 

 

An industrial answer 

 

Nestlé Suisse SA Orbe – a factory producing tea in capsules under the well-known Special.T brand – was looking to use cobotics or collaborative robotics palletising, an innovative Industry 4.0 technology. With this in mind, they required a robust, precise and user-friendly cobotic solution, working as an industrial answer to their challenge of pallet stability. 

 

“At our Orbe site, best in class pallet quality is absolute key, as our cases with the tea capsules are very light, long, and narrow,” informed Cédric Rey, Fill & Pack Maintenance & Improvement Manager at Nestlé. “This is why accurate case placement on the pallet and tight layers are major requirements to guarantee pallet stability, avoiding that products are moving through the complete supply chain, respecting their full integrity and ultimately ending up in consumers’ hands without any damages. 

 

“Additionally, we also needed to ensure the safety of our operators. It was imperative that the same level of safety would be maintained after switching from manual labour to a cobotic technology, ensuring that the solution is working safely with no fences around it. For us, the user-friendliness of [Sidel’s] new cobotic solution was extremely important as well: for instance, an intuitive navigation of its HMI was a must.”

 

Extended cobotic palletising range

 

With this successful installation crowning a list of several worldwide, Sidel decided to extend its cobotic palletising range. 

 

Due to the continued success and growing demand for collaborative robot (cobot) solutions, Sidel recently extended and completed its cobotic palletising range with a medium version that offers a higher payload – launched in May 2019.

 

Featuring a Fanuc CR-15iA robotic arm, the new CoboAccess_Pal M solution allows a higher payload while running at six cycles per minute. Equipped with DCS software and the safe contact stop technology, the new cell becomes even more industrial and therefore better suited for a wider scope of applications and market categories.   

 

Sidel is a leading provider of equipment and services solutions for packaging beverage, food, home and personal care products in PET, can, glass and other materials, with over 40,000 machines installed in more than 190 countries.