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Eighteen robotic palletizers ensure quality at tobacco company

Lorillard Tobacco Co. installs 18 robotic palletizers to speed the in-house identification of nonconforming product and enable product tracking for 40 billion cigarettes/yr.

TWO PALLETS. Each of Lorillard’s 16 robotic palletizers is fed by two packaging lines, with the robot building two pallets at one time corresponding to the two lines.
TWO PALLETS. Each of Lorillard’s 16 robotic palletizers is fed by two packaging lines, with the robot building two pallets at one time corresponding to the two lines.

At 250-plus years old, Lorillard Tobacco Co. in Greensboro, NC, holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating tobacco company in the U.S. Lorillard produces both premium and discount cigarette brands for the U.S. market, with the well-known Newport brand leading its sales, representing 88% of its revenue in 2012. In total, the company manufactures 40 billion cigarettes each year.

As with any consumer packaged goods company, product quality and consistency are paramount to Lorillard. But for the tobacco company, the pressure is even greater, as new U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations now require cigarette producers to manufacture products to exact specification. Explains Lorillard Senior Staff Engineer Randy Marshall, “By shipping product that does not meet specification, we could lose customers and bear the expense of recalling product that’s already in the marketplace.”

In August 2013, the company completed a massive packaging equipment installation to enable product traceability and the speedy identification of nonconforming product. Over a period of two and half years, Lorillard replaced two conventional palletizers and “many, many miles of conveyor” with 18 robotic palletizing systems from Intelligrated that allow cases to be tracked throughout the facility.

“It’s all about product traceability and product quality—making sure that nonconforming product does not get on the market,” Marshall says.

Single lines need single pallets
Lorillard’s history in Greensboro dates back to 1954, when its headquarters and manufacturing facility began operation there. The plant encompasses 1 million sq ft and operates 36 packaging lines. Products manufactured in the plant include Newport—the top-selling menthol and second largest-selling cigarette brand in the U.S.—Kent, True, Maverick, and Old Gold. These five brands include 41 different product offerings that vary in price, taste, flavor, length, and packaging.

Since 1998, all 36 of its packaging lines—each of which includes a cigarette-making machine, a primary cartoner, a secondary cartoner, and a case packer—fed two Alvey 880 conventional palletizers from Intelligrated. Cases were carried to the palletizers via a system of overhead case conveyors that did not distinguish the packaging line from which the cases originated.

“All of the lines fed the conventional palletizers through many, many miles of case conveyors, which meant cases of Newport, produced on many packaging lines, were mixed together on a pallet,” explains Daniel Walker, Staff Engineer at Lorillard.

With this system, if one packaging line began producing product or packaging that did not meet specification—such as a pack that was not formed correctly, or one where the cellophane wrapper was not sealed properly—operators had to search through multiple pallets to identify the cases originating from that line.

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