R.Weiss Verpackungstechnik

Does a complex product structure require a complex packaging process? You might think so. But the automation of the packaging process of Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Products GmbH shows: with a competent partner like R.WEISS Packaging GmbH & Co. KG, flexible solutions based on modular design can be realized. This is also the case here, where an intelligent UNIROB turnkey system for packaging diagnostic products was developed.

Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Products GmbH, a subsidiary of Siemens Healthineers, is a global leader in the diagnostics industry, supplying laboratories around the world with performance-oriented product solutions for diagnosis and therapy control. The company combines science, technology and practicality in its products and services, providing users with the information needed to improve individual patient healthcare.

A complex product structure

Part of the product range of Siemens Healhineers are multi-packs. There are different pack sizes. The content of the multi-packs consists of a wide variety of partially manufactured components with diverse product-specific arrangements within the folding carton. In addition, value tables are added to the sales packs.In order to automate the process of loading these folding cartons, which had previously been done manually, the company now needed to find a suitable partner that met Siemens Healthineers‘ requirements. In addition to the automated filling of the folding cases with a wide variety of products and arrangements, as well as the value tables, the highest possible autonomy of the system should also be guaranteed, for example through sufficient storage capacity of the material supply. The packages should then be sealed, labeled and checked for completeness. Process reliability was also to be increased by subjecting both the product feed, the entire packaging process and the labels subsequently applied to the folding cartons to constant quality control and by providing a corresponding option for the controlled ejection of missing packages after each process step.

R.WEISS Packaging: The matching partner

In view of these requirements for a packaging solution, the company turned to a competent partner, R.WEISS Packaging, with whom the automation of the packaging process was to be implemented and the packaging concept optimized. Instead of the plastic inlays previously used to arrange and stabilize the products, environmentally friendly cardboard inlays were now to be used, which were developed in partnership with the involvement of the packaging supplier. Particularly important here were the visual appearance for the customer, ensuring safe product transport, the nature of the material to be used, but also the machine suitability of the packaging concept. The substitution of plastic not only enables laboratories, hospitals and medical practices to simplify the recycling process of the packaging material, it also underpins the philosophy of the two companies to always act in the spirit of sustainability and thus act as role models for the industry.

After initial contact at Interpack 2017, the two companies quickly established a cooperative partnership. Both in the planning phase and in the implementation, Siemens Healthineers and R.WEISS Packaging worked hand in hand, which not only generated a smooth project flow, but also enabled the realization of a packaging solution that optimally met the needs of Siemens Healthineers.

UNIROB: A clever system

In the first step, the cardboard inlays are provided to the inlay denester via a magazine, which has to be filled manually by the operating personnel. Whereas the inlays were previously made of plastic and manually inserted into the folding carton by employees at Siemens Healthineers, a six-axis robot  pulls the cardboard inlays with vacuum from the magazine to the designated area, unfolds them and then inserts them into the carrier conveyor, which can be flexible and fully automatically adapted to the respective formats. The conveyor transports them to the next station of the line, where the pickers fill them with liquid or lyophilized products in glass or plastic bottles. And that completely flexible, depending on the selected format or recipe.
The picker area of the line consists of two UNIROB cells, in which the products and bottles from ten feed lanes are processed via a total of five R.WEISS delta pickers. Nine of the infeed lanes are designed for round products only, which are separated and fed to the picker. The tenth infeed table rounds off the product range so that square plastic bottles can also be fed in and processed accordingly. In order to ensure that no incorrect products are loaded, a barcode must be read out before the products are loaded manually. This barcode is cross-checked by the system. Only when the plant control system gives approval, the operating personnel has the option of loading products. The approval takes place both by means of a locking device on the infeed surface and supported by a visualization of the respective product task as well as the selection of the associated feed table via additional assignment screens. After the products have been separated, they are picked up by the five delta-pickers and inserted into the erected inlays at the designated position. The pickup is done with the help of special picker tools, which are adapted to the contour of the individual lids. The picker tools are equipped with quick-change devices for fast format changes. This means that format parts can be changed within a few seconds without tools.
The filled inserts are then placed into the folding boxes provided. For this purpose, the folding box blanks are available in an ergonomically accessible blank magazine, which can be filled during operation. The box blank is pulled using vacuum with a robot axis, separating the blank from the magazine and glued. A folding die moves the blank through the folding tool, gluing the cardboard sides which have been provided with hot glue and forming the previously flat die-cut blank into a folded box. The loaded inlays are now inserted by removing the inlays from the carrier conveyor with the aid of a six-axis robot. This places the inlays in the folding boxes, which have previously been indexed by a side conveyor from the erector to the filling position in the UNIROB cell. The loaded inserts are inserted reliably by means of filling centers. In addition to inlays filled with products, the flexible design also allows products to be inserted directly into the folding carton. In this case, an inlay is not used.

The now loaded boxes are then conveyed to the next station of the UNIROB packaging line. Here, too, another six-axis robot places the value table in the folding box. For this purpose, the robot removes the one or two different leaflets from a magazine by means of vacuum suction cups. Before the leaflets are removed, the data matrix code on the leaflets in the magazine is checked. After the folding boxes have been sealed with hot glue, they are each marked with two labels. The printed labels are checked in each case before dispensing and only applied if approved. Siemens Healthineers is also taking a new approach to closure technology: where an over-corner label was previously used as a tamper-evident closure, an efficient perforation is now used for this purpose to simplify product handling.

Success through teamwork

Thanks to the close cooperation between Siemens Healthineers and R.WEISS Packaging, it was not only possible to realize an efficient system for automating the previously manual handling. In fact, thanks to the R.WEISS system, Siemens Healthineers now has a process- and fail-safe as well as extremely flexible and also sustainable packaging process, which not least has a great influence on the satisfaction of laboratories, hospitals and medical practices.

The close contact throughout the entire planning and implementation process, the joint innovations and ideas – the new packaging line does not simply modernize the company’s internal packaging process, it is a product of the combined know-how of the two industry-leading companies.