Estee Lauder besųg 9 - Soco Systems

“Plug & play” rather than engineer solutions!!
Another element from the Sara Lee project that Benny Henriksen noticed was the simplicity.
“I was even more surprised to learn that this was a standard “plug & play” product. Until then, I
only knew robot projects as heavy and complex demanding considerable resources. We are not quite
looking for an “engineer project” at a dairy focusing on ensuring efficient production and logistics.
A visit to Sara Lee confirmed to us that we were not to be guinea pigs but were facing a tested
technology.
It was yet another benefit to us that the Robot-In-A-Box handles both UK- and EU-pallets”.
“We were so impressed that we just went for it”
The curiosity at Arla Foods was not to be mistaken. When Benny Henriksen had clicked a few times
on the Soco System web and saw the Robot-In-A-Box in action he was all smiles. Benny Henriksen
tells: “We were so impressed with what we saw that we just went for it”. In the following days, the
video clip was seen by curious employees and management wanting to see themselves how the future
could look like. One of the cornerstones in the project was the importance of involving the
employees from the start to ensure back-up for and understanding of the new project. Operator, Søs
Nielsen, tells: “We were all very anxious to see which changes the robot could bring to our
workplace and how it could eliminate the repetitive heavy lifts of cartons high on the pallets. With
700 cartons per hour of approximately 1 kg, quite many lifts and twists are made daily. We definitely
would not mind getting rid of that”.
Payback in just 1½ years and good ergonomics easily transformed the idea into action!
In spite of the good intentions, Arla Foods could not ignore finances.
After visiting the Internet, calculations were made showing that the payback on Robot-In-A-Box was
1½ years. Such short investment horizon eliminated the known budget rounds and the robot was
ordered at the beginning of March 2010. It was delivered at the end of June. The following Monday
morning, Arla Foods had cleared the floor and the entire system was operating on Wednesday. This
did not make packaging manager, Benny Henriksen, get into a sweat. “It was more or less just
“unpack - connect - operate”. The installation work was limited to 4 bolts to the floor and
connection of the Soco System flexi conveyor to our packaging machine. The days after the
commissioning, we made minor adjustments of the pallet patterns and of the pallet height, however,
it was insignificant compared to the other robot projects I have been involved in. With
Robot-In-A-Box, the cheeses are even placed with such precision which would have been difficult to
achieve with manual palletising. In this way, we have an even bigger guarantee for precise cooling”.
24/7 operation with up to 20 cartons per minute provides experience in record time
The popular Castello cheeses are now in their peak season which means 24 hour operation, 7 days a
week in 3 shifts. Benny Henriksen tells with great satisfaction: “We have had very few stops on the
system. Robot-In-A-Box is so simple that we can handle it ourselves. We can type in new pallet
patterns in the robot direct from the control panel and have them operational within 10-15 minutes.
The “Cape”programme also from Soco System has been used in Arla Foods for several years to
create new pallet patterns, both for manual and automatic systems. Also in our daily operation, we
are self-propelled. And when the robot stops we can usually get it started within very short time.
With a consecutive flow of pallets with 571 cartons, this does make a difference to us! The simple
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