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Making A Quick Changeover
BY KHS AG KHS ASIA
KHS AG delivered two filling lines without major disruption in production. Here’s how they handled (de)palletizing, (de)cratering and bottle washing.
1 April 2006
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When Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) one of the largest breweries in South East Asia, needed extra production capacity to meet growing demand, they asked KHS AG to replace two existing lines. The challenge? Deliver and implement a one-way bottle filling line and a returnable bottle filling line, with a maximum of two weeks production interruption each.
| This necessitated several installation phases, which included: a) The removal of part of the existing line and integration of new machine equipment, without replacing any units; b) Thorough testing of the new machine equipment; c) Integration into the line and removal of old electronic components. |
(De)palletizing
Two Innopal AS glass depalletizers were installed adjacent to each other. One deals with the returnable glass bottle line. For instance, if the quantity of returnable glass bottles is insufficient, it automatically takes action. The second glass depalletizer supplies the one-way glass bottle line with new glass bottles. Both can be used interchangeably. So if necessary, the returnable glass bottle depalletizers can be used for the one-way glass bottle line, and vice versa.
Within the returnable glass bottle line, Innopal RS3 column-type robots handle the task of palletizing and depalletizing crates. The Innopal RS3 is a multiple-station palletizing robot with a working radius of 180-deg, within a minimum amount of space. Palletizing and depalletizing processes only require a single clamping head each. The heads can easily be adjusted when the line is changed over to a different container type.
(De)cratering
Two Innopack RS column-type robots take care of crating and decrating. The packing heads of the crater as well as the decrater are changed fully automatically when changing the type of crates and/or bottles. Both column-type robots have been designed to place the current packing head and correction frame in the space provided for this purpose in a magazine, and then to attach the new components. The changeover process takes only a few minutes.
For the crater, the lane control of the feed table is also replaced–a process that also takes only a few minutes to complete.
The KHS modular dry area concept is highly intelligent solution as control is handled by a single PC-based computer. Unlike conventional control concepts, this solution uses a single intelligence approach for transferring information to all other system components via modern bus equipment thus ruling out all interface problems.
Possible trouble spots can be pinpointed immediately.
Bottle Washing
Within the returnable glass bottle line, decrated glass bottles are sent to the Innoclean DM double-end bottle washer. The crates are sent to the Innoclean KW crate washer and subsequently either to the crater or to a crate magazine integrated in the system, which ensures continuous flow within the line. Compared with the single-end method, the double-end bottle washing technique offers the advantage of multiple caustic baths (three at APB) and consistent separation of the dirty bottle infeed and clean bottle discharge.
Moreover, graduated temperatures and concentrate levels can be adapted to the particular style of bottle. For APB this graduation is significant, not only because of the wide range of bottle styles that are used, but also because at times of low returnable glass bottle availability complete batches may be filled in new glass bottles.
Advanced KHS cleaning technology adapts the cleaning program individually to new glass bottles. The bottle washer is equipped with Triple-i-Drive technology, which minimizes the time required for changeover to a wide range of different bottle styles. Once the last bottle has entered the machine, the infeed can be completely disengaged from the drive. Changeover work can begin while the bottle washer is running. The same is true for changing over the discharge to new container shapes.
| Implementation Today, both one-way glass and returnable glass bottle lines operate in three shifts with a capacity of 24,000 0.33-liter glass bottles per hour and 18,000 0.64-liter glass bottles per hour respectively. The one-way glass and returnable bottle lines can also operate together whenever necessary and possible. The flexibility of the lines also link with the existing canning line such that cans can be packed with a similar configuration using the new equipment from the bottle lines. “The new line offers us greater flexibility in packaging our beers without having to suffer repeated downtimes when we undertake changeovers,” says Alan Gourdie, general manager, APB Singapore. “This results in an improvement in the packaging line efficiency and allows us to respond more effectively to market demands.” |
More Information
www.khs.com
www.khsasia.com
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