34 CASE STUDY AW SEPTEMBER 2021
MWC’S ROBOT CONFIGURATIONS PROVIDE FLEXIBILITY Robotics came into play in the cheesemaker's palletizing operations. But that level of complexity wasn't always needed in a facility producing consistent product types and sizes. What it needed more was more simplified automation. By Aaron Hand, Editor-in-Chief, ProFood World
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s robots become increasingly prevalent in the food and beverage industry, especially on the packaging end, you might expect a state-of-the-art facility like MWC to have its fair share. But that complexity isn’t needed in a facility producing consistent product types and sizes. Instead, MWC’s operations lend themselves more to traditional conveyors and case packers, according to Jody Zepnick, CEO of Zepnick Solutions Inc. (ZSI). ZSI, which works heavily in the dairy industry, provided the automation for MWC’s packaging operations—from the equipment
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used in sealing the cheese blocks in bags all the way through the coolers and palletizers. ZSI integrates systems, develops equipment and robotic cells, and does a fair amount of custom equipment design and fabrication, Zepnick notes.
Where the robots are
At MWC, Fanuc robots are used to place the packaged 40-lb blocks of cheese onto pallets before they go through a stretch wrapper and are taken to the warehouse. Besides being robust and reliable, a big selling point of these robots, Zepnick says, are the controller safety
systems, which integrate over Ethernet with Rockwell Automation safety PLC systems. Another interesting design aspect of these palletizing cells is the end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) that ZSI developed more than a decade ago with help from longtime customer Southwest Cheese. “We reviewed some standard equipment, but it wasn’t robust enough for the applications we were looking at,” Zepnick says. “We found ways to reinforce and simplify the design. Instead of components, we standardized on welded frames.” For the MWC project, ZSI made addi-
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