Palletising of flour bags

Customer benefits:

• Doubling of production capacity to 300 tonnes per day
• No downtime for the filling plant
• Palletising of bags weighing between 5 and 25 kg without adjustments     
• Significant reduction in physical strain on employees, fewer absences from work
• Space optimisation without structural changes
• Significant increase in efficiency throughout the entire production process

Initial situation:
Alb. Lehmann Lindmühle AG was faced with the challenge of automating the manual palletising of flour sacks. The previous work processes were inefficient and physically demanding for employees.

Challenges:

• Increase in production capacity 
• Very limited space in the production hall
• Integration of the existing bagging system
• Physical relief for employees

In addition to increasing production capacity, the biggest challenge was to find a solution that would fit into the very limited space available in the production hall. A standard machine was not feasible due to the very confined and winding conditions. In addition, the new solution had to be connected to the existing bagging system to ensure a continuous production process without downtime. Another goal was to relieve employees of physically demanding work without requiring additional manpower.

The solution

• Fully automatic palletising of flour bags
• Weighing of bags and ejection in case of weight difference
• Interlayer after each layer
• Automatic feeding of empty pallets
• Pressing of finished pallets for greater stability
• Flexible control for different production sizes
• Avoidance of downtime for the bagging system

imperia systems ag developed a tailor-made system that was specially adapted to the customer's requirements. The very compact design of the solution enabled seamless integration into the existing production environment. A robot takes over the palletising of the flour bags fully automatically, while the filling system continues to run continuously. The individual bags are weighed and ejected if there is a weight difference. For better stability of the bags, an intermediate layer is inserted after each layer. As soon as a pallet is fully loaded, it is pressed from three sides in the press to form a compact transport unit and made ready for further transport. An empty pallet is automatically fed in for the next stack. Thanks to its intelligent control system, the system is flexible to operate and can be easily adapted to different bag sizes and palletising patterns.