Case study: handling stand-up pouch at HAK

From the beginning, HAK had the desire to produce the stand-up pouches entirely in-house.

In 2017 it was time. With this own retort production line, HAK has control, even more accurate quality assurance and they know the exact limits of the line. A fully automated production line has been chosen so that the “Zak van HAK” can be produced as efficiently as possible.

Broadly speaking, the production line consists of a filling line, pouch handling system, retorts and a packaging line.

Lan’s fully automatic pouch handling system ensures that the stand-up pouches that come out of the filler are positioned efficiently. A robot fills and stacks the drawers. A shuttle then drives three stacks to and from a retort for loading and unloading. The same robot ensures that the trays are stacked after sterilization, after which the pouches are placed at a fixed distance on a conveyor belt. Ready for the packaging line.

The biggest challenges in designing the production line for HAK:

• Flexibility
  HAK wanted a single production line for various packaging with different dimensions and weights. That is why Lan has built the line flexible. This is reflected in a simply designed exchange system for, among other things:
  – The stoppers on the conveyor belt that perfectly align the stand-up pouches with different sizes before they are formed on a belt.
  – The positioning of the suction cups on the pick & place unit, which transfers the pouches to the formation belt.
  – The head of the robot, which consists of 3 separate parts of max. 16 kg each (from an ergonomic point of view).
  Does the size of the package change? Then the handling system can be converted in 10 minutes.

• Special tray
  Due to the diversity of pouches, Lan has developed a special tray in collaboration with the retort supplier, in which a robot can load both large and small stand-up pouches. When loading the larger bags, the stacks become 11 trays high. For the smaller bags, 18 trays are stacked. When handling the larger bags, the buffer track is used as a storage place for the not-used trays.

• Robot loader/unloader in one: food safety
  The requested capacity of HAK allowed us to let one robot fulfill the function of both the loader and the unloader. The robot cycle has been programmed by Lan in such a way that there can never be any contamination between sterilized and non-sterilized products.

• Surface
  Total area of the production line for stand-up pouches is 600 m2. Sterilization and handling takes place on just 350 m2 (!). The space has been used optimally.