Robot from BILA Service handles heavy lifting

Imery Absorbents (formerly Damolin) produces oil and chemical absorbents as well as powder and granulate products through mining and processing of naturally occurring minerals and complementary products. Over the years, the company, which was acquired by the French company Imerys in January, has expanded its product range, now providing customer-specific total solutions for both industrial and commercial sectors in Europe and overseas markets. In addition to the factory on Mors, Imerys also has a Danish factory on Fur.

Inflexible production line called for a new solution

Production is bustling at Imerys. So busy that at times, it has been challenging to keep up with demand. With many different product numbers and numerous small productions, palletising the finished products, among other things, posed a challenge. Until about a year ago, palletising three product types was done manually. This meant that an employee stood at a conveyor belt manually palletising, for example, 15 kg heavy buckets.

"We have always had the lifting equipment needed for such tasks, but manual palletising is still a very monotonous and heavy job,"

Rasmus Krog, Project Manager

He called for a solution that could relieve employees of monotonous work and, at the same time, make production more flexible.

Streamlined palletising brought more flexibility

In addition to the heavy buckets, an automated solution also had to handle large cartons with heavy sacks as well as filled sacks for baling (wrapping with foil before shipping products). The production line, which was previously operated manually, thus handled three different processes, placing great demands on easy reconfiguration and flexibility for an automation solution. But in December 2016, the solution was ready: a refurbished Kawasaki ZD 130 robot cell delivered by BILA Service.

The renovated robot cell now serves three lines and palletises the three productions directly from the conveyor belt onto a pallet station. And since the solution can be easily reconfigured for each product type, the production is much more flexible today.

"In collaboration with BILA Service, we created a system that can handle the three different productions. It has made us much more flexible and better able to quickly reconfigure our production for the three different productions depending on sales. Previously, we packed for inventory to meet delivery times because manual handling was slower," says Rasmus Krog.