Condiment producer Bruno’s Best AG needed to alleviate production inefficiencies to keep pace with its growing order book. The Swiss company used a six-axis industrial FANUC robot to automate the palletizing of its bottled salad dressing line.
Founded in 2001, Brunos produces cooled salad dressings and gourmet butters. Since its inception, sales have risen steadily, prompting the family business to employ increasingly sophisticated production methods to keep up with demand. Now a 45-employee enterprise, Brunos produces 4 million products each year at its 3,500 sq. m (37,673.6 sq. ft.) production facility in Sarnen, central Switzerland.
Although its production line was already automated, until recently, Brunos’ packaging and palletizing function was still manual. This resulted in bottlenecks at the final stage of the process, as employees struggled to match the speed of the automated line.
Unable to meet increased order levels and at the limit of its capabilities, the firm began to look for an alternative solution – but complex palletizing patterns and limited space made its search challenging.
“We had reached our limits,” explained Michael Arnold, managing director at Brunos. “By this point, we had two or three employees packing bottles manually into cardboard boxes, but they could hardly keep up with the speed of our production line.”
“We began thinking about an automated solution for the palletizing process, but our space was rather tight,” he added. “We needed to find a solution with a compact footprint that would tie in with our existing automated processes in terms of quality and productivity.”
Robotec addresses complex palletization
Brunos turned to Robotec Solutions AG, a local provider of robot-assisted automation with more than 800 successful installations to its name across a diverse range of sectors.
“Working together with our customers, our most important task is to find the best automation solution for the application,” said Jörg Lanz, head of sales at Robotec. “In this project to palletize the bottled salad dressings, our main challenges were cycle time, space constraints, and palletizing patterns.”
With regards to the palletizing patterns, Brunos’ production line fills bottles individually before placing them in groups of six, 10, and 12. These groups then undergo shrink-wrapping in foil.
“We needed to devise an innovative palletizing pattern based on the pre-grouping of bottle packs and involving part-rotation,” said Lanz. “After completing each layer, we required the robot to place an additional intermediate layer on top. This operation would have to take place without changing the gripper to help minimize cycle time.”
FANUC arms do the heavy lifting
Robotec regularly uses FANUC’s range of industrial and collaborative robots to fulfill its customers’ requirements. In this instance, the right robot for the task was the strong, lightweight, and compact FANUC M-710iC/50 six-axis industrial robot with 50 kg (110 lb.) payload and 2,050 mm (80.7 in.) reach.
“It was clear from the start that we would choose a FANUC robot,” stated Lanz. “We’ve been a FANUC partner for over 20 years and often say we have ‘yellow blood’ flowing through our veins.”
“The FANUC M-710iC/50 fitted Brunos’ requirements perfectly,” he said. “Capable of carrying heavy loads, its long reach allows optimal processing of the palletizing pattern – and always at full speed. Further plus points include low energy consumption, a small footprint, and good availability of spare parts.”
FANUC was honored recently with a 2024 RBR50 award for reaching the milestone with the production of its one-millionth industrial robot in August 2023. That robot was a FANUC R-2000iC/210F designed to lift payloads weighing up to 210 kg (462.9 lb.) in a variety of applications.
Brunos successfully increases capacity
For Brunos, automating its palletizing function with the help of the FANUC M-710iC/50 robot has allowed it to keep pace production and customer demand.
“We are very happy with the results and success achieved following the introduction of the FANUC robot,” said Arnold. “It fulfills our expectations in terms of quality and productivity. We are completely satisfied.”
