Making Light Work of Heavy Lifting with Robotic Bag Palletisers

From flour to cement to chemicals and thousands of other powdered raw materials essential to the economy, the simple bag is ubiquitous in many high-speed manufacturing environments as a low-cost and space-saving unit of storage. But as anyone who has handled a 50kg bag of cement can attest, moving, palletising and storing large bags creates a range of new problems; problems that can, however, be solved with elegant robotic palletising solutions.

The Problem with Conventional Packing and Palletising 

Sprains and tears are some of the most common health conditions suffered in the manufacturing sector. In addition, working closely with heavy machinery such as conveyors and forklifts creates an ever-present workplace risk for those packing the pallet loads.  

Worker safety and wellbeing is of paramount importance for a conscientious employer, and therefore frequent breaks and a limited daily quota is necessary to protect productivity. This naturally produces bottlenecks and creates strain on production capabilities – something not many businesses can overcome in this age of just-in-time production and ever-fast turnaround times. 

The Future is Robotic.

Automated bag palletisers that make use of the robotic technology available through organisations like Yaskawa remove the risks and the bottlenecks in one action, as well as presenting a host of other advantages.

Workers can be reassigned to less dangerous and more satisfying work while robots take care of all the heavy lifting, performing with impressive speed and efficiency. Working 24 hours a day, sometimes at hundreds of cycles per hour (depending on the specific job), a robotic automatic palletiser can make short work of even extremely heavy bags. The Yaskawa Motoman MPL Series and PL Series, for example, can handle payload capacities up to 800kg. Their versatile 4-axis robotic arms make them perfect industry palletisers that can be configured to a multitude of different business needs. For example, packing the product with stickers facing outwards, preparing the pallet for shrink-wrapping, adding layer separations, and more. 

Automatic bag palletising robots get it right every single time, cutting down on damages and other issues that result from human error. Products are never dropped, placed on the wrong pallet, or improperly stacked. 

Improving your Manufacturing Business’s Bottom Line

As with any case of adding a new technology or process to the factory floor, realising maximum return on investment from a robotic bag palletiser requires doing your research and selecting the right solution and implementation for your business. A system that delivers results is one that has been configured for your needs perfectly and allows for easy programming without advanced technical knowledge required.

Yaskawa has decades of experience in assisting businesses do just that, saving money by maximising production throughput, and ensuring customised control over every step of the process.