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UR20 cobot palletizes wine cartons at end-of-line

Raumland GmbH

In Short

Raumland GmbH, a third-generation family-owned company, analyzes, filters, labels, bottles and ships wines for multiple wine producers. With over five million bottles and 2,500 different wines processed annually, Raumland handles enormous diversity in its bottling operation. To focus on product quality, increase efficiency, and reduce the workload on employees, the family business relies on a collaborative robot. The UR20 palletizes wine cartons at the end of the bottling line, ensuring smooth operations.

Challenge

No longer manually palletizing at the end of the bottling line had long been a desire for Raumland. During a single 8-hour shift, employees had to move a total package weight of up to 40 tons. With a wide variety of wines and significant demands on different packaging, traditional automation has reached its limits. “Every solution provider always had some sort of drawback, whether it was flexibility, the size of the system, or the price,” explains Managing Director Sebastian Raumland.

Raumland GmbH

Industry Food & Beverage

Country Germany

Number of Employees 10-25

Cobot used UR20

Components used PE20 Palletizing Solution from Robotiq

Watch how Raumland GmbH, a third-generation family-owned company, bottles wines for the wine cellar industry, analyzes, filters, labels, and ships products for its customers

Solution

The breakthrough came with the use of a collaborative robot – the UR20. It perfectly meets Raumland's needs. It is flexible, compact, and quickly adaptable, enabling it to reliably handle various boxes and palletizing patterns. The UR20 is positioned at the end of the bottling line between two Euro pallets on a platform. It is part of the PE20 Palletizing Solution from the UR+ partner Robotiq. Using a wide vacuum gripper, it picks up two wine cartons at a time from the conveyor belt and precisely palletizes them. Once a pallet is fully loaded, an employee removes it while the cobot continues stacking on the second pallet. Collaborative technology allows the robotic arm to work safely alongside the workforce without any protective enclosures.

The cobot perfectly reflects what we need. It is a flexible machine, compact, quick to set up, and, ultimately, affordable

Sebastian Raumland, Managing Director of Raumland GmbH

The cobot perfectly reflects what we need. It is a flexible machine, compact, quick to set up, and, ultimately, affordable

This is how efficiently the UR20 cobot palletizes at the end of the bottling line

Efficient and minimized bottlenecks

Whenever a different wine runs through the bottling line, Sebastian Raumland adjusts the cobot's program via the teach pendant: "Each carton has its own characteristics and behaves differently in the machine. That’s why we have saved a dedicated program for each of our customers so we can precisely address these requirements. I would love to have more machines that are as easy to use as this one."

By continuously palletizing, the cobot makes the process efficient and minimizes bottlenecks at the end of the line. The tedious and physically demanding task of stacking is eliminated. "In the end, we all still have enough work. No one lost their job," confirms Sebastian Raumland.