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Adding flexibility to case-packing & palletizing

Dean Foods fine-tunes packing and handling efficiencies for popular ‘Milk Chug’ products by installing versatile, easy-changeover case load/palletize equipment.

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Dean Foods’ plant in Chemung, IL, produces and packages the company’s popular “Milk Chug” products in half-pint, pint-, and quart-size high-density polyethylene bottles. As production of these dairy beverages has kept growing to meet market demand, Dean Foods needed to find a way to diversify the Chug packaging lines to accommodate the increased volumes.

During 2006, Dean Foods undertook two automation projects with AMF Automation (www.amfautomation.com) to address the desire for greater versatility in the casing and palletizing operations at Chemung. One project involved the installation of a new automated case/crate loading system for quart bottles of Milk Chugs and half-gallon non-Chug dairy bottles; and the other involved installation of a new robotic palletizing cell to handle shrink-wrapped trays of pint-size Chug products.

Steve Hiser, director of engineering and maintenance at Dean Foods, recalls, “The casing equipment we had been using for the quart-size Chug bottles never really fit the application because of a design flaw, and we also knew that it wouldn’t be able to handle the half-gallon bottles.”

The dairy investigated various options and determined that AMF’s VersaPak case loading system (a two-axis coordinated-motion gantry robot) would be a good fit for the Chugs application. It features a ControlLogix controller from Rockwell Automation (www.rockwellautomation.com). The programmable logic controller (PLC) interfaces directly with the robot’s motion controller. In addition, the system combines high-speed operation, mechanical-grip pick-and-place precision, and high flexibility in a small footprint.

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