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Filling with radio chips
14.04.08 Neue Verpackung
Supermarkets of all types are still registering increasing sales. The most economical products – generally house brands from various suppliers – are manufactured by well-known companies in the industry. Producers attempt to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible by maintaining a high degree of automation in filling and packing. One specialist in this area has been relying on filling and sealing solutions by groninger for many years.
The company is looking for customized solutions for packing products as economically as possible. The shampoos, bath products, fragrances, deodorants, lotions and creams are developed in the company laboratory and approved by the customers. Retail companies are not only looking carefully at prices but are also more and more conscious of the quality of the products. All products must be manufactured and filled continuously to keep inventories low, a requirement that makes speed and flexibility essential.
The company has been manufacturing three different bath products and shampoos on two production lines, which must then be manually packaged in the sales packaging required by the supermarket chain. To reduce production costs even further and to add additional filling capacity, the two lines will be replaced by one new line. The requirements of the cosmetics specialist were also high: three products must be filled on one line with different volumes. The desired mixing ratio in the presentation packaging must be adjustable at the machine. And in addition the labeling machine must reliably place the correct labels on the bottles.
The engineers at groninger accepted the challenge in April 2007 and so in only two weeks, according to the production manager of the cosmetics company, developed a unique design. The flat bottles of different colors are fed in manually. The operators place the colored bottles in the transport pucks – the machine ensures that the correct mix is added at the nine-position filling station. The mass flow system always fills the correct, preset dose into the bottles to the exact weight or volume, regardless of the density. If the density of the product varies, perhaps because of air bubbles, the amount is automatically adjusted.
The company has two filling units; all product-contact parts are fully traversable, which means that the filling system can be converted in a very short time – this greatly increases machine availability. The shampoos or bath products are mixed in three 20-ton tanks and fed to the machine. A total of 70 liters of product is filled per minute – and the output can still be increased. The products are gently transported on a cell conveyor from the filling station to the sealing station – the pucks with the filled bottles are transported in groups of nine. This conveyor system is ideal for products that are subject to sloshing or bottles that are not stable.
Every bottle receives a color-matched closure at this station – three different closures for three different products. However, the unit can also be adjusted to assemble closures from three individual parts, such as a pump, the sealing ring and the cap closure.
Now comes the most difficult part of the process: the correct labels must be applied to the bottles filled with different volumes – and this must be done with 100% accuracy. Klaus Hahn, groninger development engineer, worked on this task with his team. He initially considered a color-detection system, but this was rejected because the color differences between the bottles were too subtle. After more suggestions, Herbert Ziegler, area sales manager of the packaging specialist, presented the completely new concept, which the production manager praised as unique in the industry. RFID chips were integrated into the pucks that convey the bottles. The Radio Frequency Identification System is widely used in logistics. A RFID chip is attached to goods to enable automatic and non-contact receiving and dispatch or automatic registration at the point of sale. The RFID chips are coded with the product that is being filled at the filling station.
For reasons of space the three labeling stations must be placed in line, which means that all bottles pass through all stations. At the infeed the Herma labeling machine reads the information from the robust chips, which can be written to millions of times, and controls the two-sided labeling system reliably and safely. This guarantees that the label matches the contents. At the next run the machine recodes the puck. After this station the bottles are lifted from the pucks and packed in the sales carton in accordance with the specified mixing ratio.
The new groninger filling and sealing line has been in operation since the end of 2007, and now the production manager is considering further automation and rationalization of placement of items in the pucks and packing into the sales cartons.
Since the sale of the first system the production manager and Herbert Ziegler have been working closely together: We had been in contact for some time previously, and we wanted to give groninger an opportunity.“ The Crailsheim-based cosmetics packager delivered the machine that could fill three products in 2003. The solution is still unique today, stated the production manager. And he is still enthusiastic about the ease of working together with the project that has just been completed: Only nine months from the first talks to delivery of the system, that is good service.
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