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Palletizers lift Marcal's efficiency

Robotic and in-line palletizers automate what had been primarily a manual process at Marcal Paper Mills’ Elmwood Park, NJ, plant. A two-year system payback is anticipated.

A robotic gripper places a case (above) onto a pallet at Marcal's Elmwood Park, NJ, facility. The facility employs two robotic p
A robotic gripper places a case (above) onto a pallet at Marcal's Elmwood Park, NJ, facility. The facility employs two robotic p

From Newark Intl. airport, it’s about a half-hour’s drive north to Marcal Paper Mills’ Elmwood Park, NJ, plant. Pulling into Marcal’s main entrance, the 75-acre site seems sizeable enough to be a town by itself. The site’s buildings provide more than 2 million sq’ of space, dedicated to the manufacturing, packaging and distribution of paper products such as bathroom and facial tissues, paper towels and napkins.

Last year, the plant improved its packaging efficiency and space utilization, while reducing labor costs, by installing two robotic palletizing systems and two traditional or “in-line” palletizers. From OCME America (York, PA), the equipment was part of Marcal’s plant-wide initiative to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Despite the facility’s expansive exterior, interior space is at a premium, particularly in the “converting” area where rolls of paper are converted into finished goods. Then they’re packaged into corrugated shipping cases or “poly-cased” film-wrapped bundles.

Until last January, the bulk of these packaged products were palletized manually. “Our converting operation usually runs three shifts per day, seven days per week,” explains Gordon Mayer, Marcal’s senior vice president of distribution and human resources.

“Upgrading of our converting operation required new equipment, including in-line palletizers and robotic palletizers,” he says. While the equipment was being installed, Marcal continued to manually palletize product loads. The company hired temporary employees to stack the production on pallets and take them to the shipping dock until the automatic palletizers were in place. “We expect that the labor savings from eliminating manual palletizing will generate a two-year payback on our investment,” Mayer states.

Overall process

Corrugated cases or plastic film-wrapped bundles of paper products are delivered from upstream packaging lines to the palletizers on 3귔’ of roller conveyor from Rapistan Systems (Grand Rapids, MI). Rapistan had overall system responsibility for the Marcal project.

Product is conveyed past an Accu-Sort Systems (Telford, PA) scanner. The scanner communicates with a host Modicon PLC from Schneider Automation (North Andover, MA), to sort cases or bundles, which are then diverted to the appropriate lane for palletizing.

Full pallet loads are subsequently stretch-wrapped by two new Lantech (Louisville, KY) units. Afterwards, pallet labelers from Labeling Systems (Oakland, NJ) apply pressure-sensitive bar-code labels, one to each of two adjacent sides of the wrapped pallet. These labelers are also equipped with Accu-Sort scanners that verify that the bar codes on each pallet are identical. This information is used for the company’s computerized warehouse management system. Marcal purchased the stretch wrappers and pallet labelers through Shrink Packaging Systems (Edison, NJ).

Paper products are initially produced in plastic, paper or corrugated packages. That primary package is either case-packed into a corrugated shipper or overwrapped in a plastic bundle. Marcal produces hundreds of SKUs at its Elmwood Park facility on various lines at the plant.

From each packaging line, cases or bundles are carried along zero-accumulation roller conveyors from Rapistan. The zero-accumulation conveyors are used to prevent crushing between cases. That’s done with plastic stops positioned between conveyor rollers, explains Geoffrey Zoeller, Marcal’s director of warehouse operations. “When a case stays on a stop, it effectively shuts off the section of the conveyor directly behind it so that the case on the previous section doesn’t drive into the leading case, creating damage,” he says.

The type of secondary package, along with the packaging line’s proximity to each palletizer, helps determine which machine will palletize which product.

All four OCME palletizers can accommodate cases or bundles, but only the two robotic systems can palletize bundles that go into a corrugated tray. This four-sided tray’s dimensions virtually match those of the pallet. The tray forms a stable base for some bundled products on the robotic palletizer. The in-line palletizers are not used when palletizing bundles in trays.

Robotic process

The OCME robotic palletizing installation at Marcal includes two robotic “cells,” each having four automated palletizing lanes. One robotic head picks and places packed products from four of the lanes, while the second robot does the same for the other four lanes. Both function independently, picking and placing packs from any of the four lanes rather than picking and placing all packs from one line before moving on to the next lane.

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