Five challenges you can solve with a robotic palletizer - Van Meter Inc.
Five challenges you can solve with a robotic palletizer - Van Meter Inc.
What if we told you it only takes about five minutes to implement a solution that will do one of your most monotonous, strenuous tasks for you? With beRobox’s robotic palletizer, you can use Doosan collaborative robots to replace palletizing by hand. It’s not just a robot though. It’s a complete robotic palletizing system with the conveyor, scanners, controller and software that is pre-programmed and ready to use. What is it capable of? Here are five challenges you can solve with a robotic palletizer.
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1. OVERCOME LABOR SHORTAGES
In the past, people have been hesitant to adopt automated palletizers because they could find temporary workers to palletize by hand. Now, it’s more difficult to find that workforce. As of January , there were 622,000 total manufacturing job openings in the U.S. yet to be filled.
Nobody has the luxury of getting rid of employees. To retain the people you have, using a robotic palletizing system allows you to utilize your workforce for more meaningful and less strenuous tasks. After all, boxes can weigh 50 pounds or more. The repetitive nature of hand palletizing requires constant twisting, bending and lifting that strains the body over time and heightens the risk of injury for your workforce. The labor savings from robotic palletizing systems aren’t just from repurposing your labor but also from keeping your people safe.
2. BRIDGE YOUR SKILLS GAPS (& SAVE MONEY)
It’s not just the size of the labor pool that is shrinking. It’s also tougher to find skilled workers. While competitive solutions require robotics skills and take days to program and deploy, beRobox’s robotic palletizer is a turnkey solution that’s ready to deploy in 5-10 minutes. There’s no robotics or programming skills required, as everything is integrated from the factory.
Anyone, including the operator can set it up. Once you enter parameters like the box weight and dimensions and the size of the pallet, beRobox generates up to 10 different combinations of pallet patterns with one being the optimum. You can choose the optimum design, select one of the other nine combinations or use a custom setting to choose the pattern you prefer. You’re not just saving on manual labor. You no longer need to pay a specialist or integrator to program and implement your solution.
3. SIMPLIFY YOUR SAFETY
There are many types of robots. Why would you use a robotic palletizing system that uses collaborative robots instead of industrial robotics? Industrial robots are immobile, larger and take up valuable space on your floor, especially because you have to fence them in to guard them for safety.
beRobox doesn’t require guarding because it uses collaborative robots that move at slower speeds than industrial robots. Cobots can sense the slightest bump down to 0.2 Newtons of force and shut down before they harm anybody in their path of motion. For comparison, 0.2 Newtons is about the same force as a slice of bread resting on your palm.It also comes integrated with safety scanners. When someone is in the safety zone, the cobot will slow down to a collaborative speed, and when they are out of the safety zone, it can speed up to meet a higher rate.
4. REDEPLOY FOR GREATER FLEXIBILITY
Because it doesn’t have to be guarded for safety, beRobox’s robotic palletizer takes up less space and allows you to be more flexible with your plant floor space. beRobox’s robotic palletizer can also be wheeled around the plant and quickly redeployed for other tasks. You could palletize in one location for a couple hours then wheel it to another line, swap out the end of arm tooling and start picking a different product in five minutes. When space is tight and you need more flexibility, you can do a lot of different things with one beRobox robotic palletizing system.
5. INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
The beRobox robotic palletizer is designed to match or exceed the payload and cycle count performance of a human. While the cobot’s speed might be similar to a human worker, cobots don’t get tired or need to take breaks after palletizing heavy boxes.
There’s even some ability to double production rate for certain applications. With smaller payloads, you can pick two products at a time. While your robot might still do nine cycles per minute, you can now pick 18 products in the same amount of time. It can also palletize on multiple sides. Once your pallet is built up to your desired height, you can have someone take the pallet out with a forklift while the cobot starts palletizing on the opposite side.
LET US PALLETIZE YOUR PRODUCTS
Want to see this robotic palletizer in action? It’s so easy to set up, we can palletize directly off your production line. Contact your Van Meter account manager or call 1-800-247- to speak with one of our smart machines and robotics specialists and schedule a personalized demo.