Public Funding for A.M. Packaging Limited

Retail chains are placing orders on shorter notice, which increases the need for packaging lines to run at higher speed on a 24/7 basis; However, requests for customised packaging, and variety packs means that if a breakdown occurs then the individual items in multi-packs must be manually packaged using expensive teams of workers kept on standby. It is not possible to divert production to other lines because each line is specific to the product and packaging in question. Several low-cost collaborative robots termed “cobots” are now available and have the potential to provide a highly flexible packing capability if a problem develops with the packing process. Our proposal is to develop a mobile cobot that will be inserted into a line and its vision system will enable the robot to identify its position on the line. Having been taught previously the robot will select the most appropriate wrist and gripper combination, adjust the pick and place parameters to its actual location and within seconds begin the task in hand. The vision system will double as a safety system and slow the robot speed to human pace or stop it if a human gets too close. In this way production line speeds will be maintained in case of breakdown and standby workers can be re-deployed.

Retail chains require shorter lead times for custom multi-packaged products, driving the need for multiple packaging lines to run at higher speeds. AMP Rose has developed advanced but product specific high speed packaging lines to address this issue. The bespoke packing lines are designed and constructed by a skilled workforce which limits the productivity and output of the company. An alternative approach is to develop a standardised robot system based on cobots (collaborative robots that can work alongside humans) that is completely flexible and can work with humans on relatively rapidly changing multi-pack packaging lines. Each cobot with a dual-purpose vision system and can operate either individually or as a group. The cobot can identify its place on the line, select the appropriate gripper tools and begin work immedia-tely. This innovation means that our customers can flexibly meet the needs of the market with the minimum capital cost. More importantly AMP Rose can develop a production line to manufacture and supply standardised cobot systems rather than supplying hand built one off packing lines. With standardisation and a production line it means their competitiveness and productivity will improve considerably enabling them to grow market share and profitability.

A.M.P-Rose is one of the world's leading suppliers of processing and packaging machines for the chocolate, confectionery, candy, biscuit and wafer industries. We supply new as well as used and rebuilt confectionery machines of many types. In recent years, we have transferred these skills into manufacturing savoury snack packaging machines to meet the growing opportunity in this area. Snack foods such as crisps are typically sealed into packets straight after manufacture to preserve freshness. Different flavoured crisps will be manufactured and packaged on separate lines. It is then common practice to bring together a collation of packets for secondary packaging in a larger bag. In a conventional collation packaging line, the packets are delivered from the individual bagging lines, through a number of sorting stages and onto individual belts from where packets are individually selected and suction-lifted into the collation line by robotic devices. Because this selection and lifting operation is slow, a number of robotic devices are needed. These are extremely expensive and require a large amount of floor space. Also on a convetional line, changeover to a new product type or collation can result in significant downtime because the machinery has to be manually adjusted. We have designed an novel collating packaging line, which uses a conveying system and new servo technology to feed individual packets to the wrapper for multipacking. The benefits include: * higher throughput * automatic change-over * bale formatting * increased efficiency * lower capital costs