Packaging ¦ IDM
Thanks to SafeMove technology, the robot can work together with
its human colleagues on the production line without interference.
July/August 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com · 7
Safe human-robot collaboration in palletising
When looking for inspiration on how to realize such seamless human
robot collaboration, it is always worth taking a look across
product and country borders. For example, to the Caçapava factory
in Brazil, where Nestlé produces the popular KitKat chocolate
bars for the American continent. As a food manufacturer, Nestlé is
well acquainted with the ever-higher demands of consumers and
the importance for manufacturing architecture. In the Brazilian
production facility, Nestlé was faced with the challenge of making
the packaging process more flexible and using the available
space as efficiently as possible. For carrying out this automation
task, Nestlé received support from a trusted automation partner:
ABB. The Caçapava factory was already using ABB Robotics palletizing
solutions, but now the food manufacturer needed a more
compact robotic cell that could also be replicated at other sites.
In addition, it had to be taken into account that employees occasionally
enter the palletizing area in order to speed up the pallet
changes. Therefore, safe interaction of the robots with their human
colleagues was also indispensable in this application.
For this special requirement profile, ABB developed a new,
compact robotic palletizing cell together with Nestlé's engineering
team. The IRB 660 four-axis palletizing robot picks up the cartons
at the end of the production line with its suction gripper head and
accurately stacks them on the pallet to distribute the load equally.
With its handling capacity of 180 or 250 kg (depending on the
variant) and a reach of 3.15 meters, this robot is predestined for
palletizing and material handling tasks.
In addition, thanks to the safety-certified SafeMove technology,
the IRB 660 is able to cooperate with its human colleagues on
the production line. In SafeMove, the safety functions are integrated
directly into the robot controller. Thanks to a smart combination
of sensors and software, robots equipped with the SafeMove
technology are able to detect when people are approaching and
safely reduce their movement speed accordingly or stop it completely
if necessary. They resume their movement autonomously as
soon as people are within a safe distance again. This collaborative
approach eliminates the need for space-consuming safety fences
and other barriers and allows Nestlé to automate smaller areas on
the production line.
Overall, SafeMove has enabled Nestlé to save around 30 to 40
percent of the space in its production cells compared to the previous
ABB cells at the Nestlé site – simply by eliminating the need for
protective fences.
/international-dairy.com
