In another area of Sanford’s Bellwood, IL, facility, another Alloyd (De Kalb, IL) Model 8SC1616 eight-station automatic heat seal machine is at work in a cell operation. Installed in December 1998, this double-line packaging operation assembles the ‘2000’ line of products—including Major Accent® highlighters and Expo® dry-erase markers—inline, then feeds them via conveyor to one of two packaging stations. Multiple colors can be run at once.
On the first line, a 12-lane reversible conveyor sends markers to a pick-and-place machine and blister card heat seal machine identical to those on the Sharpie® line. These machines package one-, two- or four-pen blister packs in multiple colors at rates up to 240 markers/min. Sealed blister packs travel along a conveyor to a collator, then to a cartoner. Alloyd supplies all the machinery. Finally, a 3M (St. Paul, MN) case sealer tapes the cartons shut, and they are ready to be palletized.
Line #2 packs four pens into chipboard cartons, beginning with the same 12-lane conveyor. The conveyor leads markers to a pick-and-place unit, both of which come from PMI Cartoning. Cartons are filled with four markers each. Then, cartons are collated and case packed by Edson (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) equipment at a rate of 4 cases/min. At this stage, however, both lines can only run simultaneously when the chipboard carton line is hand-fed.
See the main story that goes with this sidebar: Sanford sold on ‘cell’ concept
