Projects: Pepsico Robotic Palletizing & Stretchwrapping
Pepsico Robotic Palletizing & Stretchwrapping
Objectives
TEG project managed a large robotic palletizing installations at the Pepsico snack food site. The factory manufactures product on 14 lines with all product being conveyed to a central palletizing system. Manual palletizing required large workforce and manual handling risks.
The project incorporated a high speed sorter capable of 50 cases/ minute delivering cases to 16 case accumulating positions. Four ABB robotic palletizers capable of 18 cases/ minute were provided and in addition an orbital high speed stretch wrapper, pallet accumulation and auto-pallet labelling were added as a second stage. The total project value was $ 4.0m.
Challenges
In-house printing of case bar codes at the Wiri manufacturing site meant that bar code quality could not be guaranteed which for an installation relying on bar codes to sort cases to 16 accumulation lanes could have been problematic. Detailed scoping of the project identified the potential bar code risk during the definition phase and the project was scoped to include bar code verification processes on the case printing lines.
Results
The project was delivered on time, under budget and achieved the required benefits of reducing headcount significantly and eliminating the manual handling hazard. The start-up was trouble-free and the inclusion of a manual palletizing loop meant that commissioning could be undertaken without any disruption to manufacturing. Furthermore there were no injuries sustained in the installation workforce. Overall this project was evaluated as being one of the best project executions at the site over many years.