Case Farms Increases Fresh Chicken Production with Robotic Depalletizing, Palletizing, and Conveying Systems
Customer Problem
The customer was manually palletizing cases of fresh chicken and sending them to a 3PL to be frozen for warehouse storage. In order to speed up the freezing process, special “egg crate style” tier sheets were stacked between all layers of all products. The sheets had to be manually removed between layers – and sanitized – before the pallets could be manually palletized for distribution, resulting in excessive amounts of labor and cost.
The customer built a new facility to execute all processes internally. A solution was needed to move cases of fresh chicken from production to a Variable Retention Time (VRT) blast freezer, then to a palletizing system for warehouse distribution. Once frozen, cases needed to be palletized and stretch wrapped for storage in a freezer warehouse for shipment.
Adaptec Depal, Palletizer and Conveying Solution
Adaptec collaborated with numerous partners to design, build, and install a complete turnkey solution, moving product from production/de-palletizing, through the VRT, then to palletizing and stretch wrapping. The project consists of six case conveyor lines that feed the VRT freezer including depalletizing from a sister site. Product is conveyed out of the VRT to two palletizers. Bar code scanners are located at the infeed of all lines and at discharge to ensure bar code compliance and communicate information to the VRT.
The depalletizing cell receives full pallets of fresh chicken from a remote facility. Vision technology is used for product quality and case orientation. Both the depalletizing and palletizing cells use FANUC M-410iC/185 robots. Before palletizing, cases are transported onto a Hytrol ProSort MRT conveyor to be sorted to the appropriate palletizing lane.
A shuttle car takes empty pallets from the pallet dispenser to each palletizing lane and stages empty pallets as required. The palletizing robots then pick cases as defined by the pallet stack pattern. Full pallets will move down the conveyor to the Wulftec stretch wrapper to await forklift pick up.
Results
- The depalletizing cell operates at 20 cases per minute.
- The palletizing system is designed to handle 4 SKUs at any time. Rate of product out of the freezer is 72 cases per 115 seconds. The cell is a dual 4-in, 4-out system with a lane dedicated for manual pallet stacking for lower volume product.
- The stretch wrapper wraps up to 60 loads per hour.
Products used
- FANUC M-410iC/185 robots
- Wulftec WCRT-200 rotary arm stretch wrapper
- Schmalz vacuum EOAT
- Hytrol ProSort MRT conveyor
- Hytrol EZ Logic 24 volt zero pressure accumulation conveyor
- Hytrol sortation Gapper-D conveyor
- SpanTech SS MultiSpan Topper Lift
- SpanTech SS MulitSpan stainless steel washdown conveyor
- Alba CDLR conveyor
- Alba 3-strand pallet conveyor
- SICK MicroScan 3 area scanners
- Troax Machine Guarding
- Keyence Light Curtains
- Keyence Sensors
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