#Industry News
Extreme automation applied to flexible packaging
Comau articulated robots for the multiple folding of multilayer bags
Comau articulated robots have been integrated inside Goglio Group’s factory in Daverio (near Varese, in northern Italy). The robots are used both for the multiple folding of multilayer bags equipped with filling spouts and for optimal packaging of the finished products in cardboard boxes with an internal aseptic container.
The plant, which features highly-innovative technologies, was designed by Siscodata, an important system integrator.
Goglio is one of the world leaders in the flexible packaging sector. Founded in 1850 by the Goglio family, the company has grown steadily over the years thanks to its investments in innovative and increasingly-automated production systems. Goglio’s customers are manufacturing companies from all over the world which operate in various industrial sectors including coffee production, aseptic & hot filling, ready meals, food & beverage, cosmetics and detergents, industrial chemicals and pet food.
Goglio’s business model is represented by Fres-co System, a registered trademark which was created in 1961 and perfectly identifies the company’s mission: the production of packaging systems to preserve food as fresh as if from the factory. Goglio’s offer consists of high-barrier flexible laminates, packaging lines, plastic accessories, technical assistance and service.
With its business, Goglio is fully committed to offering solutions that ensure sufficient, safe and healthy food for all, while respecting the planet and its balance. To achieve these levels of product reliability, the company has chosen a vertical structure for its production process, as explained by Luigi Foglia, who manages the Aseptic & Industrial Bags unit of the Packaging division. “In order to have total control over the quality of our products, we aim at producing everything inside our factories. For example, to manufacture an aseptic bag, we buy polyester, nylon and aluminum from external suppliers, but everything else is implemented in-house, including the production of valves and spouts and the graphics on the bags. This approach obviously requires a perfect organization, which also enables us to quickly handle any defective product.”
With eight production sites and seven commercial offices all over the world, Goglio can reasonably be considered a global company. It has a total of 1,754 employees, 992 of whom work in Italy.
In addition to the Daverio branch – which features the company’s headquarters, the Packaging/Polymers division and the Technology Center – there are three other facilities in Italy: Milan (Plastics division), Zeccone (machinery manufacturing) and Cadorago (Cofibox division).
Abroad, Goglio has a production plant in the Netherlands (flexible packaging) two in the United States (flexible packaging, machinery and plastic accessories) and another one in Tianjin, China (flexible packaging and machinery manufacturing).
Speaking of the US, Luigi Foglia underlined, “[...] our branches in the United States developed hand in hand with Starbucks, the famous American coffee franchise with a unique approach. Years ago, the management of Goglio Group believed in that project, and the two companies have grown exponentially over the years thanks to mutual collaboration.”
In 2018, the group had a turnover of 375 million euros, almost 50% of which derived from coffee production, followed by aseptic processing (19.1%), industrial products (11%), food & beverage (9.6%) and other divisions. Machinery manufacturing represents roughly 9% of the total income.
Automation is a guarantee of growth
Luigi Foglia affirmed, “Automation has always been part of Goglio’s DNA. It helps us make our manufacturing systems more efficient while reducing production costs, and it also allows our staff to perform tasks with a higher added-value, such as quality control.” To this end, Goglio started a fruitful collaboration with Comau and the above-mentioned system integrator Siscodata Computer Srl, which is based in Arcisate (near Varese) and specializes in the manufacturing of robotic systems for several industrial sectors. More specifically, Goglio tasked Siscodata with the development of a robotic system that could solve production challenges such as the folding and manual packaging of multilayer bags in metallic film equipped with filling spouts.
For the manual production of these bags, Goglio was using a folding machine designed for bed sheets, whose maximum size is that of a double bed. After the automated folding, the procedure was completed by operators, who would put the packages inside boxes equipped with internal aseptic containers. For larger packages, the whole process had to be carried out manually. This material is very slippery and, as the size of the bags increased over the years, the use of the existing folding machines became impossible.
Goglio didn’t only need to robotize the process, but also to make it versatile enough to manage 220-liter double-channel bags (1 x 1.8 m in size) and quickly switch to 1/1.5-ton bags (2.2 x 2.6 m in size) equipped with two different types of valves, 1” or 2” respectively. Therefore, what the company needed was a way to robotize and speed up the folding and rolling of these bags, as well as the staggered placement of the products in boxes.
Siscodata, in collaboration with Comau, designed a robotic island consisting of four Comau NS16 articulated robots with a 16 kg payload and 1.65m reach, and two Comau NJ40 robots, with 2.5 m of reach, which fold the bags transversally and put them in the boxes. The robots are positioned on a steel base and are connected to case erector (which forms boxes equipped with an internal aseptic container) and a taping machine. The four folding robots are equipped with a special gripper to collect the bags that have been laid on an inlet conveyor; the latter also features a stacking machine and an aligner unit for the spouts, which are assembled on the bags before the folding process.
As the bags arrive on the conveyor belt – in pairs or individually, depending on their size – they are collected by two robots (one on each side) which roll and fold them. The four NS16 robots work alternately to ensure high speed. Subsequently, each robot places a folded bag in a storage station, where the other two robots collect them, fold them transversally and drop them into the cardboard boxes with an internal aseptic container. When the filling is completed, the taping machine closes the box. The products are placed in a way that constantly staggers and swaps them (up/down, right/left) to alternate the plastic spouts inside the box and optimize space. As a result of the new system, the number of bags per box increased from 36 in the manual process to 42/44 pieces, saving a significant amount of space in the shipping phase.
Giulio Scifo, Comau’s sales account manager for Italy said, “Together with Siscodata, we identified the Comau robots that best suited this particular application. The peculiarity of the four NS16 robots is that they work in a cooperative way thanks to a single control cabinet, a feature which also results in significant savings in the costs for hardware duplication and in space optimization. This is further seen by the way the two robots roll up the bags coming from the conveyor belt in perfect synchrony.”
The plant’s cycle time is very fast (a bag every six seconds), so the technicians from Comau and Siscodata had to work hard in order to develop the required solution. There were two main challenges: using articulated robots with a low payload to reach high speeds; implementing a light gripper to roll up the bags with rods that are longer than one meter. Therefore, a key part of the project was the study and implementation of a gripper which is capable or rolling and folding at the same time.
Roberto Brambilla, who owns Siscodata, explained the process in more detail, “The need to make the plant work at a high speed affected the project as a whole. Since we couldn’t use robots with a high payload, as they are too heavy and therefore too slow to handle the loads involved, we focused our attention on the development of the gripper, which has a reach of about 1.2 m and had to be both stiff and light at the same time. For its development, we searched for innovative materials, as we considered using still but it proved to be too heavy. We switched to an aluminum alloy used in aerospace engineering, which, however, caused the gripper to bend in a critical way. The ultimate solution turned out to be the use of carbon fiber shaped accordingly to our needs. Moreover, since the gripper must also perform a rotation during the rolling phase, we added an extra brushless motor as the seventh axis, which is one more than the standard six axes of Comau robots.”
With great satisfaction Luigi Foglia added, “[...] Thanks to this system, which is fully operational since early March, we have been able to resume our production at full capacity, even though we haven’t reached the expected workflow yet. In our estimate, system capacity is currently at 75% of production efficiency compared to the target of 95% for productivity and continuity in a working day. However, we are confident that continuous production will help overcome the issues related to the start-up of the system and that our goals will soon be reached. The benefit of this system mainly consists of a reduction in labor and a decrease in burdensome tasks for the remaining operators.”
In conclusion, the robotic system installed in Goglio to robotize the process of rolling and folding of BIBs (Bags in Box) features highly innovative technologies that make it extremely interesting. To achieve this result, Comau and its long-term system integrator Siscodata worked closely in order to meet Goglio’s needs in the best possible way. Giulio Scifo underlined, “This system represents for Comau a very special type of application in the General Industry. It wasn’t the first time we implemented robot cells with multiple robots working in a reduced space. The biggest challenge, in this case, was the need to make the six robots cooperate continuously with particularly stressful duty cycles.”
