Picture
a vast factory containing rows of flowrappers with long extended
infeeds. Dozens of robots, controlled by vision systems,
flying around at frightening speed, arranging and building neatly
stacked piles into the moving infeed of the large heavy-duty
flowrappers. Each flowrapper controlling its own gang of robots
as it spits out an endless stream of multi-pack snacks. Grabbed yet
again by a robotised cartoner that erects, fills, closes and seals each
box of a hundred multi-packs before ejecting it onto it's
final
conveyor. It passes through into another part of the factory, outside
of the clean-room conditions, where it's automatically stacked with
others onto pallets and secured by a rotating pallet wrapping
machine. The full pallets are loaded into lorries, backed up against
loading bays, by people driving fork-lift trucks - finally some human
input!
One
of the flowrappers
is almost out of film - but simply slows a little and automatically
changes
to a second reel, splicing the near empty reel and new one together. It
waits
while the splice passes through the machine then speeds back up to full
speed and automatically rejects the pack containing the splice as it
passes over the same
reject station used by the check-weigher. The warning beacon indicates
we are down to a single reel, a network connection tells
a supervisor in his distant office. Before that reel runs low
a
human
eventually appears and replenishes the spare reel holder, automatically
cancelling the beacon and informing the distant supervisor.
It's then
that you realise this vast facility with its mass of machines,
conveyors, pipework, hoppers and steel-work is almost empty of people -
you have to look hard to see any humans. And this is just the
multi-pack line - the huge room before this one contains over fifty
vertical flowrappers and multi-head weighers fed via vibratory
conveyors from the
huge ovens. This really is how those multi-packs of crisps that
fill the supermarket shelves are produced - we know because we were
part
of the team that built it.
Picture
a vast factory containing rows of flowrappers with long extended
infeeds. Dozens of robots, controlled by vision systems,
flying around at frightening speed, arranging and building neatly
stacked piles into the moving infeed of the large heavy-duty
flowrappers. Each flowrapper controlling its own gang of robots
as it spits out an endless stream of multi-pack snacks. Grabbed yet
again by a robotised cartoner that erects, fills, closes and seals each
box of a hundred multi-packs before ejecting it onto it's
final
conveyor. It passes through into another part of the factory, outside
of the clean-room conditions, where it's automatically stacked with
others onto pallets and secured by a rotating pallet wrapping
machine. The full pallets are loaded into lorries, backed up against
loading bays, by people driving fork-lift trucks - finally some human
input!