Baking & Snack - November 2010 - 90

CASE STUDY

Oak State Products adds robotic cells from BluePrint Automation to
increase production of a specific packaging format needed by a customer.

hen a co-manufacturer has a customer who
needs greater production of a particular product, the bakery either reacts to those needs or
risks losing the business. That's why Oak State
Products, Wenona, IL, responded to its customer's need.
To accomplish this task, the cookie producer increased
production capacity and added new automated packaging
equipment on the line, according to Diana Craigmile, the
bakery's senior project engineer.
"The customer had an increased need for a convenience
store product," she said. "So we increased the entire production process by 20% and converted all of the packaging legs
to run the convenience store as well as the retail product we
had been doing."
To increase production, Oak State lengthened the oven
from 170 to 200 ft. However, much of the work was needed
in the packaging area, where the company had to automate
packaging of the convenience store product. Previously, the
line's row removal system fed four packaging legs, and only
one of those lines was capable of making the convenience
store (C-store) product, but it also had to run two legs making the retail product, which are then packed into cartons.
To meet the customer's increased demand for the C-store
product, Oak State turned to a packaging solution from
BluePrint Automation, Colonial Heights, VA, that included
adding two new robotic cells to place the C-store packages into trays. Each robotic cell receives products from two
wrappers and has two independent indexing conveyors that
handle up to 225 packages per minute, allowing each ABB
delta-style robot to pack as many as 450 packages per minute.
"The infeed is used as a fourth axis for the robot," Ms.
Craigmile explained. "The robot travels with the infeed as
it picks up packages on the fly, so the infeed never stops
moving."
Oak State also added a fifth wrapper leg to the line, and
this leg is designed as standby wrapper that can be put into

BAKING & SNACK / November 2010

action when another wrapper is being restocked with cardstock or film.
The trays are then wrapped and loaded into cases. Oak
State also purchased an HPP Case Packer from BluePrint
that includes two separate in-feeds. "The case packer is
unique in that it case packs either the C-store or retail packages," she said.
Oak State had an older case packer, but Ms. Craigmile
said, "Because we kept increasing the line speed on it, it
wasn't fitting our needs anymore. We had outgrown the
old case packer, and it would go down quite a bit. We had
standby packers available just to be ready for when case
packer went down, so we wouldn't lose any time due to the
case packer."
After adding the new case packer, Oak State no longer
has to keep people on standby, she noted. "I have one machine operator who tells me almost weekly that the new
case packer is the best operating piece of equipment we
have in the plant," Ms. Craigmile added.
The case packer has minimal downtime, and even when
it has been down, she said, it generally is not the case packer's fault but another problem such as the case erector making a box that is not correctly squared on bottom. "We ran
the case packer 16 hours a few weeks ago with only 20 seconds of downtime," Ms. Craigmile observed.
Also, the case packer is flexible and able to place either
the trays with the C-store packages or cartons with the retail
product into cases.
TIGHT AND FLEXIBLE. Oak State looked at a two different vendors to provide a solution for doing the increased Cstore business, according to Ms. Craigmile. "We had prior
experience with BluePrint, and we had a good previous installation so that played into our decision," she said.
Also, the bakery knew that it had spare parts for the BluePrint solution, which also worked in its favor, Ms. Craigmile

Baking & Snack - November 2010

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