Miller Magazine Issue: 143 November 2021

69 COVER STORY MILLER / november 2021 rectly after the production process, through quality con- trol and packaging into flowpacks bags, both with and without trays. There was no question that the change- over of packaging forms and products had to be carried out quickly and efficiently. And finally, there was another requirement: The packaging machine would have to be as compact as possible, because the available space at the site is limited. Many formats, a wide assortment, a short footprint – the bakery was delighted to receive Schubert’s offer of a flow-wrapping machine that met all its requirements. It was especially the necessity of a compact design that spoke in favour of the flowpacker from the packaging specialists from Crailsheim: “Our integrated system, which includes de-stackers, pick & place robots and the Flowmodul flow-wrapping unit, was the ideal solution from our point of view,” explains Dominique Spitz, Area Sales Manager at Schubert. Robot-supported handling of all formats In a small space, the flow-wrapping machine in Alsace has been handling all steps of the packaging process since its installation in June 2020. Flexibility is required right from the beginning of the process, because the bis- cuits come directly from the oven to the packaging line without a buffer. This is how the robot-assisted flowpack- er plays out its strengths perfectly: Long conveyor belts are superfluous; instead, the biscuits are picked up flex- ibly and gently from the product belt by three F4 robots and placed into the trays or directly onto the flowpacker infeed belt. Technology is key to the efficient use of avail- able space: A fourth F4 robot is used variably. If packing into trays, it removes them from the magazine and places them into the tray chain for filling. On the other hand, for batches where the products are to be packed directly into flowpacks, it picks biscuits from the product belt and places them onto the flowpacker infeed belt. Highest product quality thanks to image processing “By using robots in our flow-wrapping machine, we can minimise breakage, damage and waste,” Dominique Spitz points out. To entirely rule out damaged goods, each product must also pass through an incident-light scanner. Schubert’s image processing system only pass- es on the data of qualitatively faultless products to the ro- bots’ control system. Defective goods are therefore not accepted. Only the high-quality baked goods are then either packed directly into a flowpack or stacked into trays or cardboard U-boards, which are in turn packed into flowpacks. To ensure that this last step of the packaging process is