Project: Heemskerk fresh & easy, The Netherlands

Every week, around 3.5 to 4 million packages are shipped from the Rijnsburg location to large retail and fast food chains at home and abroad. Due to the increased demand in recent years, the pressure on a sufficient workforce is also increasing. Peter van Kampen, manager Projects & Innovation: “Ultimately, you look for an optimal balance between good employees in key positions and robotisation where possible to save personnel. It is important that you look at long-term growth, continuity and cost savings.

The challenge? Design a flexible production line that can be used 24/7, allowing Heemskerk to run more volume on a smaller footprint and have more predictable costs.”

At Heemskerk fresh & easy we were dealing with various forms of salad bowls that were fed into the robot cell at a speed of 50 per minute. A flexible industrial robot is the center of our case packer, the robot arm picks up the trays with a vacuum gripper and then accurately places them in cardboard boxes or crates. Lan also supplied the system for stacking and destacking crates and boxes, this is done before the packaging enters the robot cell.

Some challenges we faced when designing this line:

• Suitable for diversity of trays
  Heemskerk wanted to be able to run 3 types of products (ovals, squares and hexagonal salad bowls) over the line. The most optimal gripper depends on the type of product, the corresponding product pattern and the secondary packaging in which the bowl is loaded: a crate or a box. Lan has therefore developed a user-friendly gripper change system for 3 different grippers. An operator can make such a switch within one minute using the HMI.

• Ready to increase capacity
  The robot cell is built in such a way that Heemskerk can later increase the capacity by having a servo pusher built in. The capacity can thus be increased from 50 scales to 70 to 80 scales per minute for certain patterns.

• Product placement in a customer-specific box
  The salads are packed in a recognizable Heemskerk box. The cardboard boxes are 1/3 of a standard size and have overhanging edges, which requires very accurate placement.